Spokenlore Blog

by:GLENN KENNY

The immortal writer/director Preston Sturges, responsible for such trenchantly hilarious comedic romances as The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, and Unfaithfully Yours, held that sex was “Topic A.” The movie output most closely associated with producer Judd Apatow — The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad — suggests that Apatow concurs. Times being what they are, and Apatow’s sensibility being what it is, exploring “Topic A” in screen comedy today means, to be blunt, that the next dick joke is rarely more than a couple of minutes off.

Written by and starring longtime Apatow acolyte Segel, who’s currently part of the ensemble of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s biggest early laugh is just such a, um, gag. Segel’s Peter is established as a typical Appatowian slob in the opening (that’s a BIG bowl of Fruit Loops he’s enjoying as part of a complete breakfast), albeit a fairly functional one. Peter’s the composer for a silly cop series whose star, the titular Ms. Marshall (Bell, in probably the film’s most thankless role), is his real life girlfriend. She calls, compelling him to do some cleaning of his pad and his self, and when she arrives, he’s fresh out the shower and ready for love. Only she’s ready to… dump him. She does, and he drops the towel, and we are treated to the sight of a stark-naked Segel sobbing, his package bobbing up and down in tandem with his slight, um, man-boobs.

Yeah, it’s pretty funny. And it’s a pretty accurate depiction of a certain feature of male romantic humiliation. But it’s also a little — and this is one of my two misgivings about the movie — expected. The Apatow formula hasn’t curdled just yet, but there’s a certain can-you-top-this? tone cropping up in its raunch, and as The Farrelly Brothers recently proved with their grievously misbegotten remake of The Heartbreak Kid, that path can lead to disaster.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. After the dumping, Peter, in hopes of getting over Sarah, retreats to a Hawaiian resort that his now-ex has spoken of (we later learn she has an endorsement deal with the place). Only she’s there, with her new beau, a British rocker of bountiful attitude and hair, the side-splittingly funny Russell Brand. Much pratfallish humor ensues as Peter toggles between trying to avoid the couple and devising petty ways to avenge himself. He takes some time to recognize the new romantic possibility right before him, the comely, frank desk clerk Rachel (Kunis). And he has numerous amusing interactions with his goofy step-brother (Hader), a stoner surf instructor (Rudd) and a wannabe rockstar waiter (Hill).

As directed by Stoller (another Apatow acolyte; he was a writer on the series Undeclared), these interactions have a relaxed feel — Apatow, like Sturges, has built up a pretty formidable comic repertory company, and the movie is smart to give such seasoned and proven laugh-getters such substantial shots to do their stuff. That said, the picture still takes twenty minutes too long to reach its inevitable conclusion. What’s to blame here is not, as with Knocked Up, a surfeit of jokes but rather a little too much emphasis on a self-help theme — which, as you can imagine, is not nearly as enjoyable to sit through as a surfeit of jokes might have been. Maybe the filmmakers just want to prove their hearts are in the right place, but its characters are all plausible and sweet-natured enough (even the narcissistic rocker has a near-noble side) that they needn’t have sweated it.