Segel deserves an award just for not giving himself all the best lines in this thing

Rating: 7/10 (21 April 2011)

This is a funny movie about the cruelty of human relationships that succeeds by taking a very democratic approach to comedy.
Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) seems like a lucky guy. He's got a great job creating the theme music for a TV show and is dating the ultra-hot star of that show, Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell). The fact that Peter is a fat shlub who sits around his apartment wearing sweatpants and eating cereal out of big steel mixing bowl makes their romance all the more remarkable. That's why it's not that surprising when Sarah tells Peter she's met someone else and it's over. That sends Peter into a spiral of self-loathing and awkward sexual encounters, which the ineffectual advice of his step-brother Brian (Bill Hader) does little to counteract.
Eventually, Peter decides he's got to get away from it all and heads to Hawaii. Just as he's trying to get a room at the hotel, Sarah shows up with her new boyfriend, rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). A pretty hotel employee named Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis) rescues Peter from dying of embarrassment by letting him stay in the hotel's best suite. Rather than run home like any sane person would, Peter decides to say and be tortured by the sight and presence of Sarah. He barely gets through it with the help of some hotel employees and the terrible example of a newlywed couple who act like they barely know each other. Peter eventually asks Rachel out and discovers that there can be romance after Sarah Marshall only to finally realize that Sarah had good reasons to break up with him, reasons that might cost him any chance he has with Rachel.
As I said, this is a funny movie. However, a lot of movies try to be funny, many of them very similar to Forgetting Sarah Marshall in style and attitude. Most of them aren't. The difference is that this film has an actual point and it's not the one you'd expect. The point of this story isn't that Peter has to realize what a horrible shrew Sarah is and learn that he deserves better in life. Sarah's actually portrayed as a fairly decent girl in this film, if a bit self-centered. No, the real villain of this movie isPeter. I t's his passivity, immaturity and refusal to act like a grown-up that's the real problem and it's one that would sabotage his relationship with Rachel as surely as it did with Sarah. The challenge that Peter has to overcome isn't Sarah, it's himself.
This script brings that level of sophistication to just about every thing. Sarah's new boyfriend would have been nothing but a raging douchebag in a lesser film. Here, he has a personal integrity and genuine human emotions that make him likable. Aldous isn't just an obstacle for Peter to overcome or a target for the audience to hate. He's a person playing his own role in this interpersonal dynamic.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a sex comedy and it's pretty raunchy. However, the sex humor is remarkably non-exploitative and it can even get a laugh out of something as simple a guy unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. Writer/star Jason Segel also deserves credit for not giving himself all the best lines. Peter is the butt of the joke more often than not. Segel also engages in some full frontal nudity, which I'm not sure he should get credit for.
It's hard to describe a comedy by saying much more than "it's funny". So many comedies aren't, though, that you don't get to say it that often. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is funny. What more can I say?