Call Me Old Fashioned

Maybe I'm just getting old or something, but I gotta admit that I feel like gross-out humor in movies is going a bit too far....
I mean, don't get me wrong -- I like bathroom gags just as much as the next guy, and I certainly can't blame comedy filmmakers for using such bits to punch things up from time to time. Hey, it's been proven again and again that a few well-placed "Big Laugh" gross-out scenes will give a movie that little extra oomph that it needs to be remembered by an audience. The problem, though, is that most of the comedies I have seen lately seem to rely waaay too heavily on the scatological humor. There's too much of it, dagnabbit!


Now, I remember when I was a teenager, the wildest and funniest comedies usually DID contain gross-out scenes (that is, moments featuring bodily fluids, deviant sexual behavior, male nudity, flatulence, or anything else that would offend most grandmothers); but they were used with TACT. The Farrelly Brothers didn't just write Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin to be non-stop, unrelenting vomit coasters! On the contrary, the key gross-out moments in those films were well-spaced and choreographed with expert finesse. There might be a nasty bit about some humiliating sexual situation, like, 13 minutes in...and then there wouldn't be another one for at least 22 minutes or so. The Farrellys would make sure that their motion picture only threw the really crude stuff at us every so often; they knew NOT to make the entire film depend on such content.


For example, consider There's Something About Mary. Certainly, that movie is remembered for some of the more outrageous moments -- the scenes that made the crowd roar "OHHHHH," or "EWWWWW!"...but there really were only three of four such anchor sequences. Let's see, there's the scene with Ben Stiller and the zipper ("Franks and beans!"); there's the peeping tom bit with Matt Dillon; and, of course, the famous "unknown substance gets into Mary's hair" ordeal....All pretty gross, but all a decent amount of time apart from each other. The rest of the movie depends on an engaging plot and some interesting characters. Sure, we might walk out of the theater commenting on the Mary's hair moment, but fundamentally, that was an incidental part of the overall experience.

A filmmaker should use the over-the-top bathroom jokes sparingly. Had There's Something About Mary been an incessant barrage of such bits, they would have worn off quickly. That thrilling sensation of having just seen something that's too nasty to discuss with your parents will lose its luster if you're beaten over the head it non-stop for 90 minutes in one sitting. It's fun because we get a childlike kick out of subconsciously knowing that we're not supposed to be watching such vulgarity, let alone enjoying it!


Plus, frankly, gross-out humor is cheap. You know, the laxative scene in Dumb and Dumber may be quite funny, but let's be honest here -- it didn't take the Marx Brothers or Steve Martin to come up with that one. Most 13 year-olds could have (and probably would have) done something similar if given the chance to make a movie. It works in Dumb and Dumber, though, because the overall film manages to be funny on multiple other levels. Had that bit been the only thing to get laughs out of the crowd, then the movie as a whole would not have held up at all. Here's my rule: make a good comedy FIRST, and THEN throw in a few gross-out gags every half hour or so to give everyone a shot in the arm. And include no more than four truly nasty moments.

Movies have been breaking these rules lately. The previous standard of three or four Triple A gross-out scenes per comedy seems to have risen to, like, nine or ten, and I don't like it. The magic is lost when that happens, and I have trouble respecting the writers...especially when I KNOW that they could have done better.


The Judd Apatow gang is partly to blame. Now, don't get me wrong -- I LIKE Judd Apatow. I found The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and various other satellite projects from Mr. Apatow to be hilarious, clever, and well-constructed. In fact, I was actually rather annoyed that The 40 Year Old Virgin was dismissed upon its release by some potential viewers simply because it delved into sexual matters in an open and non-serious way. I was like, "What's WRONG with you idiots? Yes, this movie has lots of naughty jokes, but it's also got GENUINE heart and humor. Go see it!" Apatow and his cronies are perfectly capable of making quality comedy movies.

HOWEVER, I've noticed recently that the movies produced by these folks are getting further and further out there. Superbad went pretty far, but was still funny....Then there was Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which would have been really good if it hadn't been for that FRIGGIN' nude man scene (c'mon, it's like Jason Segal was CHALLENGING me to reach for the fast forward button)....And now there's Get Him to the Greek, which takes the nastiness further than any of its Apatow Brand predecessors (more on that in a minute).

Complicating matters is the fact that other comedies are now pursuing the same path to success as Team Apatow, since their writers have apparently concluded that a film won't be viewed as "hardcore" unless it's absolutely disgusting at least 40 percent of the time. Seriously -- every friggin' new comedy I have seen this year tried harder than the one before it to be outrageous with the sex, pain, and poop jokes. I can't even take my mother to the movies anymore without feeling embarrassed!


Well, that's exactly what I did this weekend. Yup, Mom and me (and my missus) went to check out Get Him to the Greek on Saturday. Can you guess how it made me feel?

Get Him To The Greek (2010)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226229/


Netflix description:
Ambitious young record company intern Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) will let nothing get in the way of his planned rise to the top in the music business -- not even the unruly rock star (Russell Brand) he must escort to Los Angeles for the start of his anniversary concert. Doing whatever it takes to get the rocker from Point A to Point B, Aaron encounters all manners of mishaps in this comedy directed by Nicholas Stoller and produced by Judd Apatow.

GAH! I feel like some kind of church boy for even making these complaints...but for crying out loud, why did this movie have to throw so many vomit, sex, and rectum jokes at me?!? Get Him to the Greek had some really great things going for it at the outset: intriguing characters, a solid premise, and plenty of star power. I WANTED to dig this movie. I really did!

It's about a guy named Aaron who works for a record company that's been experiencing some financial difficulties. See, the music industry is basically falling apart due to illegal downloading and the fact that everything put out by major labels now is total crap, so...you know -- times are tough. Anyway, Aarron gets this idea to pull in some easy revenue by staging a comeback show for one of the label's most famous, but very troubled, rock stars, Aldous Snow. The company's head honcho, played by rapper P Diddy, sends Aaron on a mission to England to pick up and escort Snow back to Los Angeles for the big concert. Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

Aldous is quite a character. He's constantly drunk, high, and in physical contact with some kind of woman. Aaron runs into trouble controlling him right away, as Aldous drags the poor chap around London's night club scene for two or three straight nights. Eventually, Aaron does get Aldous on a plane, but the hijinx don't stop there -- our two heroes embark on a wild adventure across the United States that takes them to exotic places and teaches them some very important things about life. Really, Get Him to the Greek is almost comparable to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles in that it's kind of a road movie. Although the story only takes place over a three or four day time period, it feels much longer because of all the crap that Aldous forces Aaron to go through.

Somewhere along the way, we learn more about the personal lives of Aaron and Aldous, and there's some mildly compelling drama to be found there. See, Aaron is struggling to manage a troubled relationship with a girl who is (quite frankly) WAAAY too good-looking for him, and Aldous is tortured by feelings for his ex-wife and son. WILL these two men find happiness and balance? CAN Aldous make his much-hyped comeback?? WHY does Jonah Hill get to have such a hot girlfriend in this film???


As indicated above, Get Him to the Greek just plain goes too far with the cheap humor. This film takes an excellent idea and drowns it out with relentless references to genitalia and other subjects not fit for a polite dinner table conversation. I LIKED Aldous, and really wanted to study his character deeper. I mean, the guy's interesting and quite obviously tortured. Russel Brand is perfect in the role; I could have enjoyed an entire TV series based off the guy! Brand is, without question, the best thing about Get Him to the Greek, and I am nearly willing to forgive the entire movie because of him.

(**Nevertheless, I just GOTTA ask -- who IS this Russel Brand dude, anyway??? He came out of nowhere, like, two years ago, hosting the MTV Awards as though he was some huge, long-established celebrity, and then suddenly started appearing in major movies. Don't get me wrong -- like I said, I think he's cool; I'm just SAYIN' the man became a big star overnight in the US after somehow getting famous in England. I guess he's like the English Dane Cook...only much, much funnier.**)

Anyway, Get Him to the Greek squanders the good will it creates early on with interesting characters by spending too much of its time dwelling on its least thought-out jokes. Aldous asks Aaron to smuggle drugs on an airplane by placing them in his rear end; Aaron pukes on himself at the set of The Today Show; Aldous sends Aaron into a hotel room with a disturbed call girl....Oh, and then there's the (ahem) menage a trois scene, which absolutely killed the movie for me. I won't go into details on that, but it really just took the whole escapade too far, and all magic was lost from then on. See the movie, and tell me if you found the menage a trois to be the breaking point for you, as well.

I dunno. Maybe I'm becoming a prudish wuss and losing my ability to appreciate comedies, but Get Him to the Greek just left me feeling disappointed. It got off to such a promising start, but descended into a series of gags that any hack could have written. Why not stick to the central meat of the story? It could have been great!

At its core, Get Him to the Greek is soulful and witty. Too bad it just drives off a cliff by the third act. Eh...I say maybe give it a rental when the DVD is released.

2 out of 5.

b.