For the first time in a month I was able to see and review a movie I was actually anticipating.
This movie is part of an exploding trend that has surged into Hollywood over the last couple years; the trend of funny comedies.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the brainchild of first time screenwriter Jason Segel who’s more well known for his acting credits in the movie Knocked Up, the current television series “How I Met Your Mother” and the all-too-short lived television series “Freaks and Geeks.”
Though it was cancelled, “Freaks and Geeks” turned out to be a foreshadowing of faces we could expect to see in the future.
Since its cancellation, one of the show’s writers, Judd Apatow, has had a hand in nearly a dozen successful comedies and is quickly becoming a household name.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the newest addition to this repertoire of films made by either Apatow himself or one of the young talents he worked with in 2000.
The film centers on a composer who creates music for a fictional crime-solving television program starring his girlfriend (who very quickly becomes his ex-girlfriend) Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell).
Segel wastes no time in sending his character, Peter Bretter, into a spiral of desperation, loneliness and awkward one-night stands.
After he gets dumped, his brother Brian, played by Bill Hader (Superbad), convinces him to take a trip to Hawaii so he can get her off his mind.
I don’t feel like I’ll be giving away any spoilers when I say that he isn’t the only one who decides to go to Hawaii, because the first person he sees there is the person he was trying to run away from.
What Forgetting Sarah Marshall loses in its “so coincidental it couldn’t possibly happen” plotline, it gains back with its seamless blend of uproarious humor and the reality of heartbreak.
The thing that separates movies like Knocked Up, Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall from other comedies is that they base themselves in reality.
There isn’t just two hours of hilarity that forget the fact that life doesn’t work that way. You feel what the characters feel what the characters feel because everything they go through is so relatable.
An interesting aspect of Forgetting Sarah Marshall that deserves mentioning is its dynamic selection of characters.
Inevitably, in any movie, there are going to be characters you love and characters you hate, and they’re usually fairly easy to tell apart. However, these lines become blurred when you start to get annoyed with how dependent Peter is or how “cool” Sarah’s new boyfriend turns out to be.
Segel, through his characterization, takes every character so many different places that it’s hard to tell who you’re rooting for at any given moment.
While that part of the movie’s characters enhanced the overall experience, there were a couple of things I had problems with.
As I mentioned earlier, the people behind this and other movies are good friends and know each other from before. They’ve become this generation’s rat pack (The Breakfast Club version, not Sinatra) and as such have started to appear in each other’s movies.
I’m all for adding in subtle references to past movies (happens in this one) and even including your friends as minor characters, but these things have to fit one criteria: they need to make sense.
The almost random presence of Jonah Hill (Superbad) and Paul Rudd (Knocked Up) kind of tarnished the reality created in the movie.
Overall, however, this was another exceptional comedy that not only had me laughing out loud multiple times, but also considering the dynamics of relationships and the idea of accomplishing what you want.
I give Forgetting Sarah Marshall a B+ because, although the film does so many things right, Segel needs to consider whether cameos from his pals are more useful than they are regressive.
And if anyone’s on the fence about seeing it, I have three words for you: Dracula, rock and opera.

Questions or comments?
Contact Joe at
JJUnderb9309@winona.edu