Schlubby meets louche

Rating: 7/10 (20 April 2008)

The Judd Apatow comedy machine has ground out another one. It's middling, not as sharp and on target as 41 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, or Superbad, but not as tiresome and lame as Dewey Cox and Drillbit Taylor. Again, the--for Apatow--seminal TV series "Freaks and Geeks" gets mined. (First-time director Stoller has co-authored some things with Apatow.) "Freaks" alumnus Jason Segel wrote and stars as TV composer Peter Bretter, dumped by girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). Peter does the "music" (mostly just ominous sounds) for a sleazy crime series featuring Sarah. She's taken up with decadent (but clean and sober) English rock star Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand, an outrageous Brit comic whose real life junkie confessions are a hoot. Brand takes us away from Apatow's limited world of fat Jewish boys trying to get laid with hot chicks. His Aldous Snow is a sleazy sex god and recovery guru and when he's on screen, things take a welcome new turn toward wit and absurdity.
But that comes briefly, and later. We begin in Hollywood, where Sarah comes to see the couch potato Peter, who refuses to put on clothes to hear her breaking up speech. Despondent, Peter follows advice from his brother Brian (Bill Hader of Knocked Up and Superbad) and goes to Hawaii, where his waiter is Apatow warhorse Jonah Hill and his reefer-addled surf instructor is "Friends" and Apatow alum Paul Rudd. Who should be at Peter's hotel but Sarah and Aldous? With the questionable linchpin of this lame "surprise," comedy, heartbreak, and resolution ensue.
There are no jaw-breaking laughs. In fact the only things that kept me watching were the appeal of Segel--he's a giant, slightly overweight puppy dog--and the louche Brit pungently evoked by Russell Brand. As for the Hawaiian setting, Oahu may have been a fun place to shoot. The Apatow crew probably wanted out of Hollywood. But the Pacific is too soggy and pretty an environment for repartee. For a change, instead of female nakedness (oh, just a few bare breasts), Segel is frontally nude, repeatedly, but just for a split second each time.
Apatow's posse is at home with male adolescence and early--or frozen--schlub-hood. But not with much else; the Apatow-sponsored features haven't managed to match the depth and breadth of their mother lode, "Freaks and Gesks." In the TV series, Segel got dumped by none other than Lindsey (Linda Cardellini), the lead character. None of the film comedies have come up with a female as smart, sensible, interesting, and central as Lindsay. Sarah is a pathetic sliver of humanity by comparison. Lindsey went out with Segel's "Freaks" persona Nick out of pity, and when he got too intense, she pulled away. His suffering was convincing, a little disturbing even. Her choice was wise. This sequence was less formulaic than Sarah Marshall. Nick, Segel's character in "Freaks" is rather arresting.
Peter grows out of Nick but loses rather than gains depth in the updating. The exotic setting obviously doesn't compensate. Segel already had musical ambitions as Nick, who realizes he's no rock star. Peter hates his sellout TV composing and is working on a Dracula puppet opera--an odd curio performed in excerpt toward the end. As before, Segel's appealing as a would-be artist and a basically decent but weak fellow with his heart on his sleeve, but Nick had more emotional conviction than Peter.
Sarah Marshall spends most of its time on well-trodden territory with hits predictable surprises, obtrusive local color, romance opportunities, and obligatory attempts at reconciliation. It does have laughs, but while Peter's new girlfriend Rachel (Mila Kunis) like him is basically a decent person, she mostly comes off as little more than a pretty face, and their relationship is never more than the stuff of sitcoms. In the end it seems that Segel's character lacks the complexity--or the energy--to sustain a whole movie, and he and Sarah are equally forgettable. _________________