Forgetting Sarah Marshall (***)

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Bill Hader
Seen: June 21st 2008

*** Out of ****

To start a movie with a full frontal nude shot of yourself is gutsy, but Jason Segel does just that here as TV-score composer Peter Bretter. And yes, it’s never a pretty sight, but this guy is so pathetic that is a very fitting shot – this guy is stripped clean when his girlfriend simply dumps him, rather unceremoniously. He adores his girlfriend Sarah (Bell), and is crushed by this news. He and Sarah were in essence a high profile couple, she the star of the show Crime Scene, and he the composer of the score. They even take the time to seriously send up CSI and similar shows with the small interstitials of this made up show, Crime Scene. Quite funny, but actually pretty irrelevant.

Jason decides to take a break from everything and goes on holiday in order to, as the title says, Forget Sarah Marshall. So he goes to Hawaii on the urging of his step-brother Bryan (Hader), and is given a free room by the compassionate receptionist Rachel (Kunis), with who he strikes up quite a friendship/unwitting relationship, but he has to clean the room after himself. And he did not come to Turtle Bay alone. No sir, Sarah is also vacationing there with her new (at least publicly) boyfriend, the ridiculous pop artist Aldous Snow. This guy is the poster child for what can go wrong in a combination of yoga-rocker-hippie philosophy. Sarah thinks Jason is stalking her; Aldous and Peter find some strange middle ground; and the fringe characters generally entertain during some really funny scenes, including amusing and almost shocking sex scenes between Sarah and Aldous. And then as fate would have it Jason has to move to another room – right next to Sarah and Aldous.

Of course it’s no real surprise that Sarah and Jason have some sort of make-up, since Sarah has been realising what she’s missed all the while, but Jason also starts seeing through the fog of love that which he’s been ignoring all along.

The Apatow team, at least in my eyes, have been extremely hit-and-miss. I enjoyed Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, but not the wildly successful 40 Year Old Virgin. Knocked up I enjoyed again, while Superbad was, well, super bad. This one is yet another of their better ones, with the usual gross-out/adult humour liberally sprinkled all about. In spite of the nature of the humour though, we are eventually left with a film that seems sweet, you almost forget the crassness, and you’re left with the feeling that this is a real story full of real people, and not another cut-and-paste Hollywood romance.