Cookie-Cutter Comedy

Rating: 4/10 (13 July 2008)

Movies about a guy and his ex booking hotel rooms next to each other go all the way back to the screwball comedies of the 1930's. It's such an outdated premise today that it mostly shows up on sitcoms, as it did on an old episode of "Frasier." The half-hour format is probably the best place for it. When you have such a hackneyed justification for your movie, the material had better be stellar but the writer here is obviously in over his or her head.
You might describe the movie as sitcom-ish, but the jokes are often funnier on some of these sitcoms. This should not be the case. TV writers are up against deadlines. A screenwriter has ample time to work on his or her script before showing it to anyone and turning it into a movie.
One of the "big" gag scenes in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is a moaning contest between two couples having sex on opposite sides of a wall in adjacent hotel rooms. This is a microcosm for the rest of the movie. You can see the joke coming a mile away because it's been done a million times before, including on the episode of "Frasier."
The only difference is that the joke was actually funny on "Frasier."
Instead of two couples, it was just Frasier alone in his room trying to make his ex jealous by banging his headboard against the wall and making orgasmic noises. The twist was that the room next door was actually empty and his ex and her new beau walk by the sliding-glass doors of his room and catch him in the act.
The joke was clever and contained more irony than the same joke in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." It also showed Frasier in a self-deprecating light and makes a pompous character that could easily become grating in unskilled hands even more likable. This is an example of how to construct a good joke.
And this is how you construct jokes without any of the real irony or truth that make something funny...
FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL