another success for Apatow and company, if not as spectacular as 07 releases

Rating: 8/10 (29 May 2008)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the latest comedy of ups and downs with men and the opposite sex (err, women), is a solid effort, loaded with plenty of laughs, if a little too predictable to boot. Then again, this predictability has a charm to it; the central conceit of the picture is something of an irony: a broken-up couple, Peter (Jason Sigel) and Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), go their separate, coincidental ways to Hawaii- the guy to just escape to somewhere nice and secluded and typical, the girl to, well, have a week-long sex fest with her new British pop-singer guy- and the two find they're at the same hotel. So, they end up going through the most painful motions of the break-up right in sunny, surfy Hawaii at a resort where they can get drunk as they want, have sex much as they want, and both go through their paths of self-discovery.
Of course, we're on the side of poor Peter, who might be a shlub but is a respectable one; he's working as a "tone-maker" (not so much composer) for a CSI-rip-off show (starring Billy Baldwin! great gag #1), which Sarah is also the co-star of, and in his spare time is penning a rock opera of Dracula featuring puppets. And his heart was broken in the most inappropriate moments- right after being buck naked in the shower- which adds to the vulnerability. It's somewhat typical of the Apatow formula to go along with the guy, but why carp? Sigel, also co-writer, crafts Peter as a guy we want to get the right girl at the end (certainly not the hypocritical if beautiful Sarah), which ends up being Hawaian hotel customer service rep Rachel (Mila Kunis of That 70's Show), who is of course the right girl at the right time.
Again, predictable, but the formula works so well, so why carp? The jokes come with some intermittent lulls, and despite regulars like Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd only appearing intermittently in one-note gag parts (both hysterical for what they're worth), the cast holds their own, particularly Sigel as the breakthrough of the bunch. Most noteworthy though is the Lothario/pop-star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, the real wild card of the movie), who is frank about his sleeping with whomever he wants, and is uproarious in that "hey, he's British, and an a-hole to boot!" sort of way. Then, of course, there's the whole lot of gags involving penises, dialog referring to penises (and sometimes vaginas!), and, most thankfully, a juicy Dracula song sung by Sigel himself. What makes Forgetting Sarah Marshall a good, if not great, effort is the how knowing the cast and filmmakers are with slipping in little things, improvisations and a general attitude that makes it OK to laughs at some really uncomfortable things.
It is, in a simplistic word, enjoyable. Did I mention a Dracula musical as its climax!