CASEY PHILLIPS: I’m a total sucker for movies about musicians. Maybe it’s artists’ inherently dramatic lives. Maybe it’s that those films tend to have excellent soundtracks. Whatever the reason, many musician biopics are among my favorite films.
If “Get Him to the Greek” hadn’t been about a former rock star, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), connecting with a die-hard fan (Jonah Hill), I might have been turned off by its floppy plot and low-blow humor.
As it is, it kept favorably reminding me of a less-serious, raunchier version of “Almost Famous,” and I liked the well-cast characters, some adapted from director Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel’s previous (awesome) collaboration on “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” The film just kept hitting the right notes, despite itself.
HOLLY LEBER: Doesn’t biopic indicate actual person? And other than the pool scene, what else screamed “Almost Famous?” Did I black out and miss an impromptu chorus of “Tiny Dancer?”