Very mildly amusing comedy, mainly vulgar and predictable.

Rating: 5/10 (23 November 2009)

I felt like a Scrooge-like miser while watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Around me in the cinema, people were slapping their thigh and roaring with laughter and wiping tears of mirth from their eye. I wanted to join them, really I did. but I just wasn't "feeling" it. The film amused me occasionally; frequently it didn't; and true laugh-out-loud moments could probably be counted on one hand. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a very similar experience to watching a Bo Derek movie called "10" – it's a little risqué and rude; it's aimed squarely at a specific target audience; and it's not as funny as everyone involved would like you to think. Ten or fifteen years from now, I think this film will be largely forgotten.
TV and movie score composer Peter Bretter (Jason Segal) is dumped by his hot girlfriend, TV actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). He attempts a few relationships with other girls, but each time is more disastrous than the last. Eventually Peter is persuaded by his brother to go on vacation. He chooses Hawaii as there is a resort there which Sarah often spoke highly of. Upon arrival, Peter is shocked to discover that Sarah is taking a vacation there too with her new flame, narcissistic rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). The situation looks like it's going to get out of hand until Peter befriends a pretty hotel receptionist named Rachel (Mila Kunis). Gradually he begins to develop feelings for Rachel and realises that there CAN be happiness after Sarah. He even reveals to Rachel his long-secret plan of creating a musical show based on Dracula, performed by a cast of puppets. But the course of true love is never smooth, and Peter suffers various calamities and misadventures before his fate in love is finally decided
Perhaps the chief strength of Forgetting Sarah Marshall is that it is romantic comedy for guys AND girls. There is a certain raunchy, vulgar flavour to the proceedings which tries to tap in to the notion of a "male sense of humour". Anyone thinking they're about to watch a chick flick will quickly realise this is not so. The performances are broadly what you would expect – Segal is amusing, the girls are pretty but shallow, and Russell Brand basically plays himself. The Hawaiian locations provide a lush backdrop. There are flashes of male and female nudity, none of them particularly gratuitous but none of them all that necessary either. In the script department, the story proceeds in a fairly predictable manner, with clichéd characters and comic situations which could have been lifted from any TV sitcom. At 110 minutes (or 117 minutes if you're watching the extended version), the film is around ten or fifteen minutes longer than it ought to be, but it doesn't tax the patience to excessive levels. An easy, lazy watch overall but not particularly worthy of the adulation that has been heaped upon it.