Flaccid.

Rating: 4/10 (22 June 2008)

I remember reading that Forgetting Sarah Marshall was supposed to come out in the summer under the even less imaginative title of Dumped, but they pushed up the release date after lackluster early screenings to avoid it from getting murdered at the box office. Since it's been billed as a "romantic disaster movie," a better title for it might have been The Mangina Syndrome.
Jason Segel plays Peter Bretter, the world's biggest p***y. Sarah Marshall, a made-for-TV actress, dumps him and he cries and cries and cries. When he goes to Hawaii to clear his head, he runs into Sarah and her obnoxious rock star boyfriend, and he runs into them over and over again. Then, he cries some more. A free-spirited young womanwho (as the cliché goes) happens to be better looking than the famous ex-girlfriend even though she is only a hotel conciergeslowly brings Peter out of his shell. He also mingles with the hotel staff and guests, and they are expectedly quirky characters: the comic fatso, the wisecracking doper, the stuffy Christian etc.
Because the writing is not exactly what you would call "witty" or "illuminating," the movie needs to be outrageous to be funny and sustain interest, but genuinely over-the-top moments are too scattered over the 112-minute running time. If you're college-aged or older, the rest of the misnamed "adult" humor and dialogue should seem very played-out to you. While the main love triangle is being self-consciously telegraphed, the story is padded out with some disconnected tangents involving the supporting characters and these are only mildly amusing.
Three of the main characters work in entertainment so we get some backstage digs at showbiz, including parody segments and musical numbers. These are the same as anything you could see on "Mad TV." It would also be easier to swallow these jabs at assembly-line Hollywood products if they weren't taking place during the course of a predictable romantic comedy. A send-up of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" might've been funny 4 or 5 years ago, which makes you think the script has been sitting on a shelf somewhere.
Jason Segel is adequate. He's like Jason Biggs. Not that good, not that bad. And you don't care about him either way. I'd never heard of Russell Brand before, but he's good as the new boyfriend. Though, I'm not sure what era his character was supposed to be from. He doesn't resemble any of today's popular artists and looks more at home on a VH1 reality show for 80's wash-outs. Paul Rudd should be able to play his character in his sleep by now and it looked a few times during the movie as though he did. Mila Kunis is very loose and charming in front of the camera. Kristen Bell gives a mannered performance, though it's not as forced as her acting on "Heroes."
Basically, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a paper-thin excuse for some new gross-out gags and slapstick, but it doesn't even deliver on that promise. If you want to see a gross-out comedy, you probably won't be satisfied. If you want to see a romcom, it adds nothing to an already bloated genre.