I feel like I have seen this movie many times before.

Rating: 7/10 (18 June 2010)

I have been a fan of Russell Brand for a while now, but not for his movies. This is actually my first film of his that I have seen. I got to know him from his various appearances on Letterman and Conan O'Brien. Anyway, I was excited to see one of his films finally. Jonah Hill plays a normal guy who works as an intern in the offices of a music business and gets the unwitting opportunity to pitch a concert idea to his boss (Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs), that involves bringing Russell's character back to the States for a concert in L.A. Unfortunately, the Director/Writer of the film picks a tired, overused character design in the guise of the typical drug-ridden, big-haired, British-1980s-like star who has seen better days and needs a come-back scenario that has been seen and heard time after time. The comedy unfolds methodically in the beginning, dishing out the laughs at a slow boil. Or, at least, it felt like that. The movie starts out slow in the beginning, gets going in the middle but crashes in the end. By the time you get to the end of the movie you do not like any of the characters and the message, although received is ignored because we have heard it a million times. Brand is very talented. He has a wonderful scene where he calls his ex-girlfriend and finally you begin to like this guy, but it is a little too late. Hill just seemed to be there, although he had his moments. Diddy steals the show. He has the most laughs but like everyone else in the movie you just want to punch him out. What we have here is a cute, funny, enjoyable attempt and a film worth seeing at least once, but overall it is repetitive and unoriginal. It felt like they needed to force the comedy out and needed a Herculean effort just to execute, even, the potty-humor.