Among family is better

Rating: 7/10 (3 March 2009)

The Judd Apatow produced "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is one of the latest examples of a comedy form in American cinema that hopefully still has some things to show us. It's also a movie made in family, in which you feel everyone had a really good time and worked really hard so you could laugh out loud; and don't forget, the work of people that have respect for each other and their talents.
Some time ago, the humble Apatow directed a script co-written by him and Steve Carell; "The 40 Year Old Virgin", and gave Carell the lead role. He had already worked with him in "Anchorman", which is not another story because both movies share, among other things, cast members. Then came "Knocked Up", an opportunity for Seth Rogen to steal the show; then Rogen wrote the script of "Superbad" and was also part of the cast; then Jason Segel (just Jason in "Knocked Up") wrote a script, which ended up in the film I'm reviewing, directed by another writer, Nicholas Stoller.
Essentially, everything here is about the script. What the script requires, the movie will deliver. After we meet Peter (Segel), naked, being dumped by the super famous Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) and we hear him cry, we also want what his stepbrother Brian (Bill Hader, from "Superbad"-and "Knocked Up"-) recommends for him: a vacation.
In Hawaii everything looks more colorful, and I don't know if Segel knows much about the culture and the people there, but the way the script puts it, the beach and the hotel where Peter ends up seem to be paradise; specially when a beautiful woman (Mila Kunis) salutes you at the reception. But is it paradise if your ex-girlfriend is staying there with her new guy (a British rockstar wonderfully overplayed by Russel Brand)? I don't need to tell you how funny this movie is because you should know already for the people who made it, although I'll tell you how they admirably work to make it funny. They save us discussions and dialogs about the couple breaking up by going directly to the point; they provide us a vacation with plenty of characters to meet and supply each one of them with a killer line that is not repeated later (smartly, thankfully) for a greater effect-there's only character played by Jack McBrayer that has an inevitably continued joke-; they even make sure we know some of the people we meet (Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill get us an instant smile when we meet them and we feel that we are safe among friends).
Segel's screenplay is hard work, developing one character that shares the 'Apatow sindrome' (not to good looking but scoring a strikingly good-looking girl, not getting out of home, few friends, tenderly-or not-addicted to sex) but somehow strikes as different. Segel's writing and his performance make us see a sensitive and committed guy in the way Peter speaks but don't forget to show us the flashbacks of a relationship that most of the time made him look stupid (anything for the sake of a good laugh). The script also dominates the shape of the modern romantic comedy, with its typical structure, adding some elegant personal touches that are all of Segel's merit.
The film is not better than others like "Knocked Up" because in the whole development of Peter, the movie forgets about the rest of the characters and loses a bit of the Apatow humanity. The women are not fully developed (in fact, the Sarah Marshall of the title seems like a heartless doll, which is in part the point) and there's a lot of the friendship factor, values and talks missing.
It's all good though, because the honesty is still there, and because the movie runs too long again and we don't complain (thank you Jason Bateman there in the credits). We just keep laughing.