Get him to the Greek

Directed by Nicholas Stoller. Starring Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Rose Byrne, Sean Combs, Elisabeth Moss, Colm Meaney 16 cert, gen release, 109 min

THIS intermittently amusing comedy counts as a sequel to – or spin-off from – the less entertaining Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but I think we all know its true cinematic lineage.

Get Him to the Greekconcerns a bunch of guys who, over a busy few days, drink and vomit their way towards a kind of crude maturity. Got it, yet? Part of the film takes place in Las Vegas. Ring a bell? That's right. Get ready for the first of many attempts to replicate the triumph of last year's The Hangover.

Greek's modest success hangs around a nicely balanced comic double act. Jonah Hill turns up as a hidebound record label employee who is dispatched to London with instructions to escort Aldous Snow, a wild rock star, back to LA for a showcase gig. If you've seen a bus over the last month, you will be aware that the hedonistic singer (recently distracted by embarrassingly patronising experiments in Afro-centric pop) is played by the logorrheic mop we know as Russell Brand.

Mr Hill is short and tense. Mr Brand is tall and verbose. Mr Hill seems inhibited by Californian numbness. Mr Brand has an Essex boy’s glib insouciance. For all the years of post-war British decline, there is still, it seems, comic potential in the sense of awe that overcomes some Americans when presented with a dropped “h” or a stopped glottal. The Hill-Brand beast sparks with enough chemistry to ignite even the least promising comic set-ups.

That's just as well. Produced by Judd Apatow and showcasing the film-maker's characteristically dubious gender politics – once again, the women are dull, sensible scolds or faintly deranged libertines – Get Him to the Greekis as underwritten as that Andy Warhol film about the Empire State Building. Again and again, the actors are asked to fill yawning gaps with overextended stretches of repetitive improvisation.

Get Him to the Greekalso suffers from a misunderstanding of the current dynamics of rock music. Profile writers often argue that Brand looks like a rock star. He doesn't. He looks like somebody trying to look like a rock star.

When Brand finally gets on stage to warble one of Snow’s grimly sui generis songs, one is reminded less of Keith Richards than of a grotesquely etiolated and superannuated Jonas Brother. Not that I’d say that to Russell’s face.