Loser morphs into Mensch much too late

Rating: 3/10 (11 March 2009)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall chronicles the misadventures of Peter Bretter, a musician who composes music scores for TV shows. He works on a show called 'Crime Scene' (which is a satiric takeoff on shows like 'CSI'). The star of the show is a cute blonde named Sarah Marshall, who Peter has been dating for about five years. Sarah shows up one day at his apartment and announces that she's dating a rock star and their relationship is over. From the outset one wonders what Sarah sees in Peter. His apartment is a pigsty, he hates his job and it seems that his muse to create a great musical theater piece has completely left him.
Peter has a stepbrother, Brian, who encourages him to start dating other women (Brian and his wife periodically pop up later in the film via a computer video link but the comic possibilities between Peter and his nutty stepbrother are never developed). Peter still can't get Sarah out of his mind so he decides to take a trip to Hawaii where Sarah liked to vacation. When he arrives at the resort hotel without a reservation, a cute brunette working at the front desk, Rachel, takes a liking to him and lets him stay at their most expensive suite for free. Meanwhile, Peter, discovers to his horror that Sarah is staying at the same hotel with her New-Age, rock star boyfriend.
The first half of 'Act 2' focuses on Peter's inability to stop obsessing over the breakup of his relationship with Sarah. The main bit is Peter continually breaking down and crying whenever memories of Sarah pop up in his mind. In one particularly unfunny scene, Peter gets a call from Rachel from the front desk asking whether he can hear a woman crying in an adjacent room; of course it's Peter who's the one who's been bawling the whole time! Meanwhile, Sarah's boyfriend, Aldous Snow is an affable Brit who's avoided drinking for seven years. He invites Peter to dinner but Peter can't face Sarah with the thought that she's with someone else.
At the midpoint, Peter attempts to 'forget' Sarah Marshall. He goes out on a date with Rachel who turns out to have a shady ex-boyfriend who ends up punching Peter in the face. Despite her attraction to bad boys in the past, she finds the goofy Peter amusing and attractive. Peter receives encouragement from various comic types who work at the hotel or hang out at the beach. A loony surfer instructor teaches Peter how to surf but he clumsily ends up colliding with Aldous while surfing and is knocked out cold.
Peter's relationship with Rachel remains platonic. Soon Sarah is finding out that Aldous is no great catch. He announces he's going on tour and might have herpes. Before you know it, he breaks his vow of abstinence and crudely brags of sexual conquests with other women while drunk. Sarah is no longer "into" the boyfriend and wants to start things up with Peter again. They have a brief sexual encounter but Peter realizes he's smitten with Rachel. He confesses to her of his brief fling with Sarah to prove his 'honesty' but Rachel takes it in the wrong way and rejects him. In a last moment of desperation, he tries to prove his love to her by tearing off a topless picture of Rachel pinned on the wall of a bathroom at a local club, only to be mercilessly beaten by the bartender-owner who considers the picture his property and domain.
The beating appears to wake Peter up. He goes home and starts exercising and his muse returns. He's now composing a puppet musical about Dracula. In the best scene of the film, Peter puts his comic musical on before an appreciative audience. One wonders why the Dracula musical couldn't have been developed more and featured as a main part of the plot. Rachel ends up coming to see the musical and they end up reconciling.
Describing the plot of 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' is difficult precisely because it's so disjointed. One searches in vain for a story arc that builds to a satisfying conclusion. Rather 'Marshall' feels like a series of skits thrown together that for the most part do not pay off. And when Peter, our lovable loser hero, finally redeems himself and turns into a 'mensch' at the climax, we've spent much too much time with him as a surly 'loser'; the transformation into a good guy is undeserved as he is basically quite misanthropic until the last 15 minutes of the movie.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall could have been a much better comedy. There was the potential for satire, particularly in the CSI takeoffs at the beginning and end of the film that were never developed into something really clever. The same goes for the aforementioned puppet show (the most original moment in the film). Finally, the idea that Sarah would pathetically try and rekindle her romance with Peter after everything he put her through left me feeling unsatisfied. Despite Peter's positive transformation at the end, somehow I would have liked to have seen Sarah go off on her own without feeling the need to hook back up with an ex-boyfriend who treated her so poorly during most of their relationship.