So that’s the first of what will probably turn out to be a large number of quotable lines from the very funny GET HIM TO THE GREEK. As far as I know, this is the first really enjoyable movie of the year (CITY ISLAND is a decent but distant second). It would be easy and right to say it’s way too gross, but it honestly means to be a very critical dispaly of the self-indulgent and extravagantly disgusting characteristics of our “celebrity culture.” The movie owes something to MY FAVORITE YEAR and something to ALMOST FAMOUS. It’s not as good as and much more tastless than those two excellent films, and I guess a social scientist could trace the growth of American decadence from the tame but still very adult and funny Sid Caesar show through the undisciplined but good natured adolescent excesses of the heights of rock to today’s commodification of what used to be regarded as depravity. But in each film an innocent and obscure young fan learns a lot, is made better, and is left at least something good to remember about his amazing experiences with someone really famous. And the Russell Brand character is in some ways at least a worthy heir of the Peter O’Toole character from MY FAVORITE YEAR. In each case a lonely, disoriented, womanizing, and drunken almost has-been is allowed a moment of heroic performance and so a touch of real greatness, and a touch turns out to be all each of them needs.
Saturday, June 5, 2010, 4:28 PM
June 5th, 2010 | 6:54 pm
Thanks for the praise for My Favorite Year, Peter; an old favorite of mine, one that few people remember these days.
June 6th, 2010 | 11:29 am
A similarity between this movies interpretation of modernity and sex and the city 2 was thev”designer lifestyle” about marriagevor sexuality. In sex in the city 2 we fins the characters attenptingvto create their own necessities ie in marriage they attempt to only live with each other 5 nights a week and in the end decide how wrong it was and how important real obligations are. In get him to the Greek we see a similar designer these in women as they are around to be ogled and exploited, and also sometimes to provide emotional sustenance, a duality that makes this movie both a hymn to, and a subversion of, the ideal of heterosexual monogamy. In the end what is right wins out as is your main thesis: the designer life style just “feels wrong” and that is where your idea captures the day.
June 9th, 2010 | 11:27 pm
Peter, you oughta be a(n) (established) movie critic. We need a Tocquevillian Roger Ebert. I don’t get out to see movies too often–probably out of laziness. I can’t explain why I don’t go because I enjoy the experience of watching movies on the big screen. So I will go see Get to the Greek–the trailer looks amusing. Generally you have good taste in movies, i.e., I like similar movies as in Almost Famous–but especially in My Favorite Year.
Ben, interesting thoughts. I’ve seen enough of the TV show Sex and the City to get a gist of its ideological premise, and I must say that it annoys the hell out of me for the very same reasons you adumbrate. So I won’t be able to make the comparative points between Get to Greek and Sex and the City 2 that you make because I will never watch the latter–unless compelled under extreme duress by a beautiful female companion. After all I have my limits!
Nonetheless, from my experience in life and video watching, your connections between the two movies are probably spot on without having seen either.
BTW, Bob Cheeks is not bad as a movie critic either.
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