Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Date posted: Sun, 04/05/2008 - 9:14am

Year:	2008
Director:	Nicholas Stoller
Cast:	Jason Segel, Kristin Bell, Mila Kunis, and Russell Brand
Rating:	B+
Reviewed by:	David Holmes

 

 

Within the first five minutes of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Jason Segel is seen fully and frontally nude, sobbing like a giant hormonal polar bear who’s lost just her cub. He finally turns around, sparing the audience at least some of the horror of his lumpy naked sorrow, but then covers his face, bending over in a pose of abject concavity and making us actually wish that we were seeing him from the front again. Maybe there’s a metaphor buried deep within the folds of Segel’s fleshy loins, or maybe by first baring his body it makes baring his soul later on less humiliating. Either way, Segel intends to elicit more from this vulgar display than mere shock value or gross-out laughs. It’s as if he’s issuing an ultimatum stating, “I’ll make you laugh, we’ll have some fun with Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, but only if you’re willing to see more of me, inside and out, than you ever expected.”

And so it goes with the latest Judd Apatow production, a smart and surprisingly tender chronicle of the heartache and eventual acceptance that follow the end of a relationship. In Segel’s character, Peter Bretter, there exists a subtle evolution of the “adolescent Apatow hero.” Yes, Peter lacks ambition, doesn’t take very good care of himself, and eats fruit-loops out of giant mixing bowls, but he also possesses some degree of understanding and respect for women that his forebears (Andy from 40 Year Old Virgin and Ben from Knocked Up) only reach at the end of their respective films. If Andy is the utterly inexperienced virgin, and Ben is only a few bong-hits and one night stands ahead of him, then Peter is the guy who’s experienced enough to value a steady relationship, but still too much of a mess to survive on his own.

The catalyst for Peter’s despair is actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) who stars in the DNA-for-dummies television program, “Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime,” which features all the spermy violence we’ve come to expect from shows like CSI and Cold Case (only with 100% more Billy Baldwin). Peter composes the show’s brooding synthesizer score, but his real dream is to stage a puppet rock-opera based on Dracula (Segel’s impersonation of the count is one of the film’s many comedic highlights). His idyllic cereal-crunching life comes to an end however when Sarah dumps him for Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), the foppish frontman of the awesomely bad British pop-rockers, Infant Sorrow, whose album Sodomize Intolerance has shot to the top of the charts (Aldous is what happens when you mix Bono’s earnestness with Mick Jagger’s sexual appetite, so basically the worst kind of guy to court your ex-girlfriend). When Peter decides to spend a week in Hawaii, he is shocked to discover Sarah and Aldous staying in his hotel, which forces him to deal with his break-up in a series of increasingly awkward situations, culminating in a chaotic double dinner date involving Sarah, Aldous, Peter, and Peter’s new love interest, an insanely nice hotel employee named Rachel (Mila Kunis).

 

 

Essentially, the film is comprised of these comic episodes with little else in the way of plot, making for a breezy, easily-paced affair that works well against the laid-back Hawaiian setting. But what keeps the audience engaged beyond the beautiful scenery, riotous improvisational work of Rudd and Hill, and just about everything that comes out of Russell Brand’s mouth, is the courageous, charismatic performance of Segel. His cleverly self-deprecating brand of humor certainly finds precedent in the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks, but Segel distinguishes himself by acting out his character’s neuroses in a more physical, often corporeal manner. For example, I can’t imagine Alvy Singer violently gutting a pig in an act of tearful catharsis (nor do I care to imagine Brooks’s Robert Cole naked, crying on a bed, surrounded by tissues used to various ends). Furthermore, Segel brings a welcome dose of charm and kindness to the sarcastic, sometimes fatalistic proceedings so that, in parading Peter’s shortcomings and insecurities, he renders his character all the more endearing to the audience.

Although this outing lacks the endless quotability of 40-Year Virgin, Superbad, and Knocked Up, Sarah Marshall is an equally bold and insightful examination of a young man who is forced to mature by unforeseen circumstances. Sure, many of the jokes fall flat, and there’s still no sign of a female character worth caring about as more than merely a conduit for the male’s eventual maturity. But nevertheless, there’s something undeniably impressive in how Segel effortlessly blends the sensitivity of a romantic lead with the goofy vulgarity we’ve come to expect and embrace from America ’s new wave of comedians. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in its admirable ability to encompass the wide spectrum of what makes us laugh, whether it’s over the painful experiences we hope in vain to avoid or the awesome absurdity of Dracula puppet rock operas, is even more proof that the new comedic guard is here to stay.