When I typed in Get Him To The Greek on a useful hosting site I use, this wasn't the film I thought I'd be seeing. And yet, well, I'm mega happy I did get to see it. Even though, if I didn't have an excellent knowledge of recent films, I might have been convinced it was the Russell Brand feature until the very end, when they finally had the wherewithall to roll the title.
And the film is a weird mix. Let me state two things right here and now- yes, the effects are great, although in all of the CGI we see today they don't really stand out. Secondly, that fucking owl (Bubo, apparently, which I forever think of as a plague bubo on the armpit of any film about TITANS, actual legendary TITANS) still manages to make an appearance, even if it is for the film makers to put in a little joke about how it should be left behind. Just leave it behind. Don't bring it out for people to laugh at, and then bitterly remember. Just leave it and no one would even remember it.
If anyone doesn't know who, or what, bubo is, it was basically a comic-relief who eventually came good and did something other than whir and tick and shrill to help defeat the kraken in the 80s film, because otherwise it might look like they'd given the character (character, they actually named it a character, not a prop) nothing to do. Oh, and he looked like this-
Yah. Really. This guy was called a Greek legend's R2-D2. And that get's my goat.
Anyway, the appearance of the clockwork monstrosity didn't completely ruin the film. It has genuine talent in it (Pete Postlethewaite should be given bigger roles in everything he's in; Liam Neeson does his best godly god routine and comes across as more than Liam Neeson with a powerful voice for the first time in the last few years since, perhaps, Love Actually or Batman Begins; and Gemma Arterton is brilliant as the ethereal and lithe, almost elfin Io, the best wise and aged woman in a youthful body since Cate Blanchett's Galadriel, in my book).
Unfortunately, there's a lot of tat too. I had great fun playing spot the actor. Nick Hoult, the bloke who played LaChiffre in Casino Royale, Ralph Fiennes, the man who convinced me as Alan Quatermass in the recent BBC version but fails to be anything other than a crim in Guy Ritchie films, that bloke from that swords and sandals thing, that bloke from that other swords and sandals thing, they were all there. And they were all a tad 2D (I know, I was watching it in 2D cos I was at home, bit still). The characters just weren't anything but lines read out. Which is a shame.
The whole thing sort of flounders and flops around towards an ending. Medusa is the only poorly realised CG in the film, but the flashy images and the black pegasus (why black? Maybe they thought they needed a token black winged horse) versus the deadly kraken just doesn't make the heart thump in anticipation. It doesn't involve you. At all. Leastways, it didn't grab me in.
The idea of the gods and the vision of Olympus is the best I've seen on film, holding court on a floor of clouded heavens with a spiral tower of mortal statues representing the world of men. It's just a shame that we get fleeting glimpses of it and nothing more. The gods are hideously underrepresented, and it becomes a second-rate action flick with nothing more going for it.
I must say, too, that hearing so many actors banging on about Argos just made me want to cry. There were other places in the Greek empire, why not flesh out the dialogue with a fully realised (if only by mention) world?
In the end, the film falls flat on it's face, and I didn't care what happened. Which is a shame. Get the gods and men right, probably in a series of films are an awesomely budgeted series, and it could have been a real end of the world, inhumane immortals against the suffering humans, rollicking and poignant story. A poor show for a great myth.
3/5
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