Haven't I Seen This?

I heard a lot this weekend about the new movie Get Him to the Greek, starring Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. Hill plays a record company intern hired to escort an out-of-control rocker, played by Brand, from England to a concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Hijinks and, I am told, hilarity ensue. Brand reprises the Aldous Snow character he played in 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I think I liked this movie a lot better when it was called My Favorite Year and starred Mark Linn-Baker as the young guy escorting Peter O'Toole as a hard-partying actor around town the week before O'Toole is to appear on a late 1950s sketch comedy show. Sure, Hill for the pre-Perfect Strangers Linn-Baker is probably an even swap. But even laying aside how some unfairly accuse Russell Brand of being a comedian, there is no way he can measure up to O'Toole's defining comment on about 95 percent of Hollywood performers when he's panics at learning the show will be performed live: "I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!" Plus, we're talking Peter O'Toole. And we're talking Russell Brand. Even with all the grease that must be in that unwashed mop on top of his head, there's no way he's as slick and smooth as Peter O'Toole.