American Trip

This quasi spin-off of Forgetting Sarah Marshall is definitely not as good as that comedy classic, though it has its moments. The music is straight up great. It's impressive that the songs in this satire of music films is better than most actual music films. The cast is reliable and there are plenty of legit laughs, however some of the raunchiness can be a bit much. It lacks the heart or consistency of FSM, but it's still a pretty entertaining comedy that makes good use of its stars.

Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) is a messed up rock star. He has a damaged relationship with his ex Jackie Q (Rose Byrne). Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) pitches an idea for a 10 year anniversary of Aldous Snow's successful Live at the Greek Theatre show to label head Sergio (Sean Combs). Aaron is given the chance to wrangle Aldous for his big chance.

The Judd Apatow friends gather together to do another hilarious movie. Russell Brand is wonderously wild and childlike. Jonah Hill is a great straight man, charmingly funny and sweet. The combo is a home run. Even P Diddy is great as the bombastic exec. Jonah and Elisabeth Moss are hilarious together in the beginning. The Sarah Marshall call back is hilarious. But it's not just all hilarity. Aldous has real personal problems and not just about the drugs. It's a wonderful mix of heart and comedy. Start stroking the fury wall.

It's not quite Pixar-like, Judd Apatow's streak of very funny, very good films, but it's close. As a producer, he's as close as it gets to Mr. Automatic, going from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to The 40-Year-Old Virgin to Talladega Nights to Superbad to Pineapple Express with only a couple Year One's and Walk Hard's to queer the run. Apatow's done it the right way, by surrounding himself with a gang of truly funny people and by recognizing what a lot of timid, gloss-obsessed Hollywood folks won't: that guys like Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Steve Carell and Seth Rogan could carry pictures. They're all... these are odd-looking dudes, these Apatowian fellas, and it's hard to make them look good blown up billboard size. But all of them can write their own jokes, all of them are funny, and as Hill proves in the new Get Him to the Greek, all of them can carry the weight of a big film on their back, despite their schlubbiness, despite the films not being SNL spin-offs. There's just talent and comedy, that's both fresh and charmingly old-fashioned. With Get Him to the Greek there's a weird bit of Hollywood story/actor oddness that evaporates as soon as the picture gets rolling: writer/director Nicholas Stoller is taking characters from a previous film that he directed (that was written by and starred Jason Segel), Forgetting Sarah Marshall, keeping one intact (Russel Brand's rock god Aldous Snow) and slightly tweaking one other (Jonah Hill's disturbed-fan maître d' becomes a shy music intern), and sets them loose in a completely unconnected narrative. Snow is the last true rockstar, recently fallen hard off the wagon post-a disastrous, career-threatening single about starvation in Africa called "African Child". Worried about slumping record sales and a label-head (the surprisingly entertaining Sean "Diddy" Combs) looking for "the next thing", intern Aaron Green (Hill) suggests the company return to its rock roots and sponsor a gig at the Greek theatre in L.A., to mark the 10th anniversary of a legendary Aldous Snow show. Green is sent to London to collect him, packing an adrenaline shot and instructions to do whatever it takes to get the slippery, deluded, hard-partying rock god to L.A. in three days. Very funny hijinks ensue.

Brand as Snow is the spectacle, the wild spark that animates the whole film. Snow vacillates wildly from petulant artistic preciousness to aggressive junkie posturing to anarchic drug logic and back. Story-wise, tt's a dangerous thing to chance, as the rock-excess thing has been parodied to near-death. Brand, though, limns the edges of his chaos with occasional moments of human frailty. The film notes late in the going that Snow's self-appointed rock messiah is intelligent, and it's a small ignorable moment that speaks to the subtle bits of originality in the film's script and in Brand's performance: he's a pompous idiotic waster in true rock fashion, but there's a cruel, manipulative intelligence underneath it all that helps the whole film feel fresh and funny, even if it's going over well-trod Spinal Tap ground.

The discovery of the film, though, is Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, the spectacular punching bag at the heart of a film that mercilessly visits every kind of humiliation and degradation on him. He stands square in the furnace blast of Snow's rock-superstar excess and the shrivelling, repeated "mind f__ks" of his conniving, unbalanced boss: he pukes, he's sexually assaulted by more than one person, he's threatened, cursed, party to a stabbing. But what makes Hill's performance truly funny is that while he is in essence a nebbish, a victim, a barf-coated ill-looking cannonball of a man he nonetheless retains a really kind of compelling dignity and oddly endearing self-confidence. There's a depth to Hill's performance in this film (and in Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well) that's actually… special. He's not an oversize wild-man, he's not a tiny Michael Cera-esquire mumbler. He's doing something new, and it along with everything else in this film is very very funny. 8/10

This is one of my favorite comedies ever. I can not give it higher than an 8 because it has some weak spots, but overall I though Russell Brand and Rose Byrne give two of the great comedic performances of the 2000s. I enjoy a lot of the music, and there are some other standout moments, such as P. Diddy's "Gamechanger" scene. It's a very simple story, and it does try to hit some dramatic beats as well, but it's at its best when things get ridiculous.

This is Nicholas Stoller's first mainstream film in which he both wrote and directed, exploring the high's and lows of Jason Segal's Forgetting Sarah Marshall's character "Aldous Snow".

Aldous Snow is the controversial, alcoholic, drug addict rock star stereotype played by Russell Brand. He does it well and leaves us with a strong and convincing performance, but then It's hard to criticise his acting when he for the most part just plays himself, and to that point he does it well as always.

The story-line is basic but strong, and doesn't skimp on the laughs... or the nauseating, leaving the theater in stitches and disgust several times throughout. It takes you on a journey of the highs and lows of life as a rock star, the publicly glorified side and the more somber, touching on the loneliness and struggles with relapse.

It flew by fast and felt squashed at the end, the resolution was a tad jammed and left me slightly disappointed, but i'll be watching it again.

If you liked the hangover, you'll defiantly like this.