Get Him to the Greek

First Hit: There are moments that this film is really funny and there are times it felt sophomoric and I wanted the scene to move on.

Russell Brand plays Aldous Snow an aging rock star that was a wild child singer who made lots of money making rock albums then made a horribly conceived album. He decided to get clean of drugs but that didn't help his marriage or his career so he starts drinking and doing drugs again.

It is here we pick up the story because Sergio Roma (played by Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs) is a record label producer who looking for something big to create more income so that he can provide Nike Air Jordans for his six kids.

His minions have some stupid ideas but when he calls on Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), Aaron thinks that a 10th anniversary concert at the Greek Theater in LA with Aldous Snow will be a huge hit. He explains how it will be great and generate a lot of money by doing a simulcast with Facebook, Twitter and a "pay for view" cable channel.

Roma agrees and sends Green to fetch Snow and bring him back for the concert. The film has enough moments of well represented typical rock star lifestyle and its juxtaposition to a regular person’s life. There is the; I’ll do what I want when I want to do it thing.

There is the focus on “banging” as many girls as I can thing. And there is the I’ll do what it takes to get high to not feel what my life is really about stuff thing. To Green, at first it is fun but he sees the hurt and shallowness in it Snow and wonders if this is the life for him.

What detracted from the film are the sophomoric bents like the often seen Green vomiting because he can’t hold his liquor scenes.

Brand is great as Snow and held his own as a Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and Lars Ulrich version of a rock star. Hill is not an actor I find very entertaining as he appears to play the same sort of guy most of the time. He’s a semi thoughtful, unimaginative guy who longs to have a normal life and is a bit slow on the uptake. He uses his size to create sympathy and humor but there is little coming from his brain and heart. The chemistry between him and Daphne Binks (played by Elizabeth Moss) is virtually non-existent. Combs is funny and great as the music record producer. I love the dialogue about mind fucking. Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel wrote this and there are moments of truly funny, laugh out loud, scenes and dialogue which director Stoller used really well.

Overall: Where I enjoyed watching Hangover a second time with my girlfriend, this film doesn’t have the ability to be funny or interesting the second time around because the laughs are one shot and some of the stuff gets old quick.

Notorious

First Hit: This wasn’t a compelling story as to why Chris Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G. and Biggy Smalls) was so admired by rap fans. It seemed more to be a story about Sean “Puffy” Combs ability to make Chris famous.

It's hard to compare the two rap star oriented films I’ve seen; Eight Mile and this one Notorious. Eight Mile was a compelling the story of a man learning that transparency of one’s life and soul through his rap was his strength.

Notorious wanted to make a case for Chris being a real mover in the rap business while he matured and learned about life. However the films other characters, especially Sean “P. Diddy” Combs (Puffy), and Tupac Shakur kept drawing my attention away from this story with their own story.

I kept wondering how these other characters reach their success. There is no question about what Combs brought to the table by believing in B.I.G.’s talent, but B.I.G.’s tenure as a rapper was so short (Two Albums),

I left the film thinking that a good portion of his draw was based around the East Coast / West Coast rivalry not his talent or path. There isn’t enough history to make the case for greatness or a film.

The story basically sets us up by watching Chris getting caught in the draw of gold chains and “paper” (money) so he quits going to school to sell drugs on the street. As a side light, and a way to share his feelings and what he sees on the streets, he raps and in one scene bests the top street rapper. He ends up getting thrown in jail for dealing dope and comes out of prison hoping to find another way to make a living. He lays down a track that gets heard by Puffy who signs him.

Puffy becomes friends with Tupac Shakur. However Tupac is shot in the building where B.I.G. is recording and the East Coast / West Coast game is notched up a level. B.I.G., in hopes of changing the war, heads to LA for a Soul Train awards banquet and gets shot and killed.

I thought Jamal Woolard was good as The Notorious B.I.G. as was Angela Bassett as his mother Voletta. Other players were, at times strong including Naturi Naughton as Lil Kim and Julia Pace Mitchell as Jan. However, the story was inherently weak because there wasn’t a solid buildup as to why Biggy Smalls was so poplar or commanded the outpouring of fans (or this film) he commanded. The story kept getting split because it was Puff Daddy who was making the big lines at key moments (I.E. "You can’t change the world until you change yourself”) which Biggy repeats later.

Overall: This film didn’t have a big enough story to carry it though although Woolard did a fine job of capturing the public, and maybe private, Notorious B.I.G.