I’m a huge Jonah Hill fan. Love, love, love the guy. Probably my sole complaint about his career thus far is how little opportunity he’s had to make an impact (did it say something about how insignificant he was in the latter that his character in Get Him to the Greek wasn’t even the same one as his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall even though both featured Russell Brand as Aldous Snow?). So you can guess how excited I was when I heard that he had a new show coming to television. Hill as a cartoon seven year-old? Sounds great!
Reality, however, doesn’t always live up to our expectations, and in the case of Hill’s new FOX animated series, Allen Gregory, that’s unfortunately what happened. Hill stars as the title character, Allen Gregory De Longpre, the pretentious son of a gay couple who starts attending public school after the family runs into financial trouble. Alongside Allen are Patrick Vanderweel (Cristina Pucelli), Allen’s only friend/personal assistant, his one love Principal Judith Gottlieb (Renee Taylor), and the guy he wants to be friends with, Joel Zadak (Jake M. Johnson). In theory it should be awesome, but it’s not. Why?
Well, for starters, most of Hill’s best less-than-serious characters are self deprecating ones. Think about it for a second … he cuts Fogell down plenty in Superbad, but his Seth is very much aware of how much of a loser he is. And while in the movie he was playing a fictionalized version of Seth Rogen, Hill might as well have been playing pretty much every character he’s portrayed in his career. And I’ve loved them all. But Allen Gregory’s a brat who can’t recognize his own limitations, social or otherwise. He’s super mean to Patrick, and his obsession with “J” crosses from squeamishly amusing to really gross. Jonah Hill pushes the boundaries of decency too far there; this is, after all, a seven year-old we’re talking about. The sex tape in the second episode? Come on.
But it’s not just Allen Gregory who goes too far. His father Richard’s (French Stewart) attitude toward his partner, Jeremy (Nat Faxon), makes Mitchell’s treatment of Cam on Modern Family seem acceptable, and that’s not easy to do. Allen’s horrible toward Jeremy, too (the least the show could do is establish what the kid has against him), but what we’ve learned leaves us with the impression that Richard basically forced the happily married, heterosexual Jeremy into a homosexual relationship by convincing him that he was gay. He might be, but the show has made a joke out of not only how aggressive Richard is, but also how not into it Jeremy appears. Ha, ha?
And what’s up with Julie (Joy Osmanski)? Allen hating his newly adopted sister I get, but at least one of her fathers having no interest in her as well? There are certain things that don’t make for good jokes, and Allen Gregory manages to push the envelope too far with many of them.
It’s a given that not every actor is made for the movies, but it’s possible too that not every movie star is made for the small screen. I wouldn’t make that call on Jonah Hill at this point, when all he’s done is play an animated kid, but it’s not the greatest start for him.
I’ll probably keep catching the show On Demand just because it’s him, but this isn’t a star vehicle for Hill. I’d love for him to do a project that enables me to watch him be awesome every week, but this ain’t it.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 23, 2011 @ 15:50 EST5EDT
