Get him off of drugs, get him out of your girlfriend’s bed, get him out of trouble in the clubs but at the very least get him to Los Angeles’ famous Greek Theater, known for its intimate outdoor setting (roughly seats 5800 people) with past performances by the likes of Phoenix, Pearl Jam, Wilco, The Who, The White Stripes, and The Dave Mathews Band, to name a few. Reprising his role as Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) is Russell Brand, big coiffed, thin rocker-esq English comedian-actor who looks like he just stepped out of British TV’s The Goodies (1970) or The Young Ones (1982)—certainly a cross between George Harrison, Ricky Gervais, and Nigel Planner who played Neil the stoner from the latter of those two shows—with a little Monty Python in him for sure. This Judd Apatow production extracts the usual charm and sweetness from the grit and grossness of situational humor like his other films 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) or Knocked Up (2007) without making you feel hung over. If anything, Get Him To The Greek might leave you feeling a little hungry for more.

The Story: In attempt to boost sales for record label mogul Sergio Roma played by Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs, employee Aaron Green played by Jonah Hill offers up famous rocker Aldous Snow and a comeback show at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles. It’s been ten years since the failure of Snow’s last record, African Child, but after some hesitation Aaron’s boss bites and gives him 72 hours to fly to London, get Snow and get him to The Greek.

The Goods: Leaving Los Angeles, which Aaron loves and knows like no other city, means leaving his medical student girlfriend Daphne played by Elizabeth Moss (Peggy from Mad Men); she tells him they may move to Seattle, which he’s not too thrilled with but flying to London to retrieve his rock star idol for a job that will impress his boss and give him time to think about Seattle is enough goods to get this party started. Fish out of water Aaron, upon meeting Snow, is immediately flung into one rocker and groupie scenario after another which means dinner and drinks at a swanky restaurant in London, then more drinks at a pub, then more drinks and a few drugs and dancing at the clubs. Aaron, though being convinced by his hero that he needs to have more fun, knows the clock is ticking, as do we with huge white font flashed on the screen reminding us every so often. It’s the classic Cinderella story where Cinderella is told she can go to the ball but must be back by midnight, all done at a rapidly good pace that has us gasping for air between fits of laughter.

Obviously, getting Snow to The Greek isn’t going to be that easy. A good thing for us because for Aaron, and Snow, it’s one conflict after another pushing them further away from their arrival time for a concert that has now “sold out in ten minutes.” And it causes Aaron’s boss to get involved. Roma, played exceptionally well by Combs in a role that I think is the best part of the film, arrives in Las Vegas of all places (yes, the boys wind up here after a TV appearance in New York and some other shenanigans along the way), almost as if Roma is Aaron’s fairy godmother. His head magically floats on screen at times reminding Aaron of the task at hand and the consequences if that task isn’t met. There’s a meeting between Snow and his father, played by Colm Meanie that with the Rolling Stones’ Rocks Off, or Rip This Joint, I can’t remember, playing in the background gives you a sense Meanie’s character is kind of like Keith Richards. They talk gigs and play the guitar for a bit before a specially rolled mixed herbal substance called Jeffrey gets the guys wacked out of their brains. This gets Roma and Snow’s dad in a fight that is reminiscent of the pie throwing films of the Three Stooges and others of that era. It gets pretty funny, and suddenly Combs is sharing with us the break-out performance of his career. Up to this point in the film, about an hour and ten minutes in, Get Him To The Greek is packed full of fun and it’s just what you would expect when teaming up a shy, kind of naïve green young man with a rock star known to do outrageous things. Aaron and Snow are like man-children and bond over that one commonality. Sweet boys with facial hair that avoid responsibility…Snow, you feel wants responsibility because he’s never had any and the other, Aaron, avoiding it because he’s had too much of it.

The Flaws: But then suddenly, the film looses momentum. It sort of falls apart and the only thing that could save it is a performance at The Greek like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Which it is not. Don’t get me wrong, I like Brand as rocker Aldous Snow who performs songs written by former Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and kind of carries the same swagger as Cocker, but for starters I wish the script and director Nicolas Stoller who also directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall had incorporated more of The Greek and what it means to the music world and Los Angeles in general. Why the Greek? And how is it that that venue would be the one chosen for a come-back? Don’t assume the audience knows what The Greek is even if a majority of them will go out and Google to find out why The Greek is famous.

The story also needs more plot diversion; I think one of the hazards that can befall a writer-director such as Stoller who also wrote the script based on characters created by actor Jason Segal is that not enough people are getting a pass at improving the script. Get Him To The Greek has Roma the boss, it has Daphne the girlfriend, it has Snow’s relationship with an ex-girlfriend Jackie Q (played by Rose Byrne, who does some amazing MTV 80’s parody videos sexed up for today’s generation that are hilariously raunchy) and Aaron’s relationship with Daphne but it needs one more thing, something like a crazed fan or a stalker, something that really threatens the players, gives us more conflict than we get to take us through to the end and fade to credits. It all seems made for TV in a lot of ways but having a life-threatening event or chain of events would take this film to the level it needs to get to to punch up the humor. Maybe it should explore drug addiction on a more serious level. Maybe explore the loss of someone Snow loves on a more serious level. I think the characters are so likable that they really deserve something more momentous to motivate them. In 40-Year-Old virgin, the virginity, and the toy figurines, they’re vitally important to the main character. Shouldn’t this come-back, or the potential gain he gets by losing something previously dear to him be that way for Snow?

Roma’s motivation is his kids, how he has to pay for all of their Air Jordans; Aaron’s motivation is Daphne but also Snow, since he’s a big fan…waking up to his music, posters on the walls, t-shirt he sleeps in…but it’s not convincing maybe because there’s not enough of his fanaticism for Snow throughout the film. And there isn’t a sense of disappointment from Aaron as much as there should be. There’s a point in the film where Aaron is having a panic attack due to massive tripping on “Jeffery.” Snow stabs Aaron with an adrenaline shot much the same way Eric Stoltz does it to Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. When Aaron too rises like Frankenstein on Red Bull and a defibrillator you get the sense that this $h*t is real. It’s intense, and the change in behavior is severally dramatic. That same reaction is missing however when Aaron realizes what his hero is, how dependant on drugs he is, how lost he is. And I think he needs to have just as dramatic a moment or moments in those realizations as he has when he’s given the adrenaline.

At some point it doesn’t even matter that Snow has a gig at The Greek because there’s a loss of steam, mostly because there wasn’t a sufficient amount of engine creating that steam earlier on in the film. Besides, again, having The Greek be hyped a bit might make it more of an attraction for Snow, and Aaron, and the audience in terms of desiring to be there. When complications ensue those complications should be preventing them from getting there and they should want to be there more than anything—they should want to climb every mountain, swim every ocean to get there. But they don’t. They take the journey but the journey should be taking them.

The Call: Tough one but I say spend the ten and see it with a crowd knowing you’ll have a blast with a majority of the film and in seeing P Diddy Sean Puffy Combs develop some real comedy chops before your eyes. But that the film also ferments to a sweet indulgence in the end that leaves you wishing you had had a tad less sugar.

Rated R for strong sexual content and drug use throughout, and pervasive language. Running time is 109 minutes, which is nineteen minutes too long in my book.