Review Summary: "You missed an awesome party. I woke up with glitter on my dick."
He’s loud, brash and arrogant to the point of a messiah complex. He’s equal parts Mick Jagger, Bono and the Gallagher brothers, with a hint of Johnny Rotten for good measure. From his heavily teased hair to his vintage clothes, his image doesn’t so much scream “rock star” as it hollers it from the nearest skyscraper. He is Aldous Snow - and if he wasn’t a work of fiction, he could well have been a roaring success at one stage of the past twenty years.
Get Him to the Greek sees British comedian-cum-megastar Russell Brand take both the character of Snow and his band, Infant Sorrow, to a completely new level. The entire soundtrack of the film is presented here as a release by the band, with Brand himself singing on all but one track. It might seem a tad excessive to most; potentially stretching the joke too far - and at times, this certainly is the case. When it’s on target, though, there’s more than a few laughs to be had as Infant Sorrow compile their greatest (read: most ridiculous) hits from their eight-album “discography”.
Unsurprisingly, we’re mostly dealing with sex, drugs and rock & roll on
Get Him to the Greek. “Riding Daphne” leaves very little to the imagination as Snow croons of the titular character taking “my manhood in her throat”, adding that “she knows the Heimlich/She won’t choke.” Punchy opener “Just Say Yes”, meanwhile, sees Snow offering himself up as a particularly crude drug metaphor: “Snort me and chase me and swallow me whole/Or take me up yer arse if that’s the way you wanna go!” Much like the film, it’s completely ridiculous, yet is consistently hilarious entertainment - and it’s so spot-on in its parody of self-indulgent, sexist rockstars that it’s actually scary.
Occasionally, the tracks only work as an audio companion to the film, and without context the songs might not reach their full potential. Take “Furry Walls” for instance - on its own, a ludicrous anthem of nonsense (“All around are furry clouds/Look, here’s a furry dove”); and yet it revolves around one of the funniest recurring gags of the film. The best advice to give listeners would be to see the film and then grab the soundtrack, but the fact that the humour is often based on compromise is a little odd.
The music, with a strong group of session musos, is well-arranged and catchy. Given, it’s mostly generically-structured, ballsy rock & roll, but in a way that’s kind of the point. “The Clap” is one of the soundtrack’s highlights for this very reason - the main guitar riff comes off as the evil cousin of “My Sharona”; but for the T-Rex glam-rock stomp that it is, it’s entirely effective. Lyrics like “We got the clap/Can’t be beat/Got it off the back of a toilet seat” don’t hurt either - at least, not nearly as much as the disease being sung about.
At some points, the jokes of Snow’s uncontrollable lifestyle and ego does grow a little tired. “Bangers, Beans and Mash” could have been a b-side for The Killers at their most dreary, and “I Am Jesus” takes a one-sentence gag and attempts to stretch it out into a three-minute song. The tracks with Jackie Q - played by Rose Byrne - could have also been cut from the final release, as scoff-worthy as they are the first few times if only for their complete lack of subtlety. Still, once the fat is trimmed you’re looking at a quite entertaining body of work.
It’s definitely not everyday one sees such a dedication to character as Brand has shown to Aldous.
Get Him to the Greek might not have years of lasting humour, but for fans of both Russell and the film itself, it’s all but icing on the comedic cake. Stroke the furry wall and take a bite.
