Forgetting Sarah Marshall (4.5 out of 5 stars)

My wife and I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall written by and starring Jason Segel. Segel was the very tall friend of Seth Rogen from Knocked Up, and if you click through both those links, you'll see metacritic scores Knocked up an 87 to Sarah Marshall's roughly 65. Ebert, though, because of his good wisdom, decent heart, and genius gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars. I am more like Ebert on this than the rest of Metacritic obviously, but what else is new.

The movie stars Jason Segel as Peter, a music composer on a prime time crime television show (in the vein of CSI and Law and Order: SVU) starring his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall, played by the awesome Veronica Mars - I mean, Kristin Bell. Almost immediately into the movie, Sarah breaks up with him for a famous musician, breaking Peter's heart into a million pieces. Peter first tries to screw his way through the misery, meeting some interesting girls along the way, but doesn't much succeed, and so after talking with his step-brother (played awesomely by the SNL guy who plays the brother from this awesome Dear Sister spoof skit that my family and I have watched probably 100 times on youtube), he goes to Hawaii to get away. But, of course, once he gets there, he learns that Sarah and her new boyfriend, "Lothario," is there too. That more or less sets the stage for a week in hell that ends in Peter making some meaningful discoveries about who he is and who he is not.

I want to say more, but to say more, I'd have to say too much, so I won't say anything. This is of course a Judd Apatow produced film, and it's Segel's writing debut and his first time as leading man - both of which he was great at. You can see that the script has got heart in it, but was definitely workshopped some by Apatow because it's flat in some places which I think probably just reflects Segel's first time at this. It has all the marks of an Apatow film, though - deeply obnoxious and crude and simultaneously loving, full of male and female friendships, genuine love, beautiful and ugly people, and in the end, redemption for everybody. Apatow's world is a world where people laugh but at no one's expense, except for maybe sometimes at their own expense. It's also a world of friends - friends who love one another, who can lean on one another, who are steady with one another. And best of all, it's a movie where men who are beautiful deep down can be discovered by women who value them for that beauty.

The Apatow formula, if you can call it that, is also one in which the movie refuses to dumb down life for the audience. One of the things that you could see in this movie is that it was an extremely formulaic romantic-comedy, with "types" of characters that historically could've easily been fit with simplistic two-dimensional characters - the bitch ex-girlfriend and her pretentious boyfriend, for instance. Instead, we have "the bitch ex-girlfriend" whom we cannot easily hate because though she mistreated him, we also see that he mistreated her, and though she made bad decisions, it's not like she didn't try to get him to change. There's plenty of fault to go around, and the movie just refuses to allow you to gloat and hate anyone because of things they've done. For that reason, Apatow should be given a gold medal. How often does Hollywood tell us stories that indulges are own selfish insecurities by forcing us to assault characters for their misdeeds? FSM doesn't let you do that. Like the other Apatow films, it's full of forgiveness and real people. Who knew that the vulgar sex comedy could really be such a vehicle for viewing the human heart so well?

So definitely see this one. See it with your lady friend. But I should warn you. You'll see a ton of full frontal male nudity, and it will be hysterical and terrifying at the same time. Also, see Ebert's review of Pineapple Express, which he also gave 3.5 stars.

Oh, and by the way. The movie is perfectly cast. I mean, perfectly. How Paul Rudd manages his performance as a friendly, stoner surfer instructor is beyond me. Paul Rudd may very well be the greatest comedic character actor ever. The Jack Lemmon of our generation maybe?