Another Apatow triumph

Rating: Null/10 (22 August 2011)

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is yet another fantastic comedy from producer Judd Apatow, the man who gave us "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" a few years back.
As with those previous films, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which was written by Jason Segel (who plays the lead role) and directed by Nicholas Stoller, has as its center a fairly ordinary person just trying to make some kind sense out of a world that seemingly could care less that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In this case it's Peter Bretter, a fairly average-looking musician, whose girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Mila Kunis), the beautiful star of a cheesy TV crime drama, has just dumped him for Aldous Snow, a scruffy, longhaired rocker played by Russell Brand. In an effort to get over his loss, Peter takes a trip to Hawaii, only to discover that Sarah and Aldous are staying at the same hotel he's checking into.
The element that separates "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" from so many other sex-tinged comedies these days is that it actually knows how to find humor in the offbeat moments of life. The jokes are never obvious, and the situation, though certainly contrived to some extent, is close enough to real life to make us care. Furthermore, the screenplay boasts an unusually large number of impressive secondary characters, including Bill Hader as Peter's exasperated stepbrother; Jack McBrayer ("30 Rock's Kevin the Page) as a sexually repressed man on his honeymoon; Jonah Hill as a sycophantic maître d'; Da'Vone McDonald as a blunt-spoken bartender; Paul Rudd as a zonked-out, 40ish surfer; William Baldwin and Jason Bateman as Sarah's hammy costars; Taylor Riley as a chef with a sumo wrestler build; and Kristen Bell as a sweet and gorgeous hotel clerk who has a few issues of her own lurking just beneath her deceptively placid surface.
Each is a joy to watch and each brings something unique and refreshing to the comedy table. And that's not something one can say about most movie comedies these days.