This is being released under the =93Judd Apatow=94 banner as if Judd=92s
name alone is now a seal of filthy comedy approval. Wondering if a
comedy is funny? Well, Judd Apatow was involved, so it must be so
funny you=92ll laugh until you rupture something.
Okay, so 40-Year-Old Virgin was funny, and Knocked Up was funny.
Apatow directed them. But now are we really meant to believe that
Apatow doesn=92t even have to make the movies for them to be funny? He
just =93produces=94 them under the Apatow Productions banner, other people
direct them, and they=92re still full of Apatow-y goodness.
I think not. Even with the commercial and critical success of some of
his comedies, the law of diminishing returns kicked in around the time
of Drillbit Taylor. Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn=92t going to kill off
the Apatow bandwagon, but it might throw a wrench or two into the
spokes.
It=92s not a horrible film, in fact it=92s relatively funny at some
stages. The main actors aren=92t horrible, the costumes are nice, the
lighting was okay, and the make-up work is top notch throughout. I
don=92t know what the catering was like, but it was probably okay. No-
one looks like they got sick from bad food, so that=92s my assumption as
to the relative merits of the food service.
Key grips, teamsters, extras, the people doing the incidental music:
They all did a good job. But at practically no stage could I figure
out why I should give a damn about any of it.
It=92s mostly, for such a long-arse film, pleasant the way that a long,
slightly boozy lunch at a caf=E9 with friends can be nice. It meanders
along, doesn=92t require anything too profound to be said or discussed,
and can end at any stage without seeming arbitrary or cut short. The
flick could have gone for an hour more or an hour less, and really
wouldn=92t have suffered either way. There=92s no feeling of moving
forward towards anything throughout the flick. It just is, exists,
like a pet rock or extra pockets on a pair of cargo pants that never
get used and never need to get used.
People just talk and talk, and it never really amounts to anything.
The relationships and characters aren=92t really that fleshed out; they
simply exist so that the protagonist can spend 90 per cent of the film
wallowing in grief and bitterness before the Big Finish where he
learns all that life has to teach him so that everything can get
wrapped in a neat little package. Or medium sized package, taking the
genitalia he possesses which gets flashed at film=92s beginning and
ending.
My biggest problem with the flick is that whilst I like the lead
actor, being Jason Segel, I don=92t really find his acting convincing in
this flick at all. The Peter character is a decent enough stand-in for
the actor himself, since he also wrote the script. But on the most
part I just found his acting almost impossible to accept, and that
jarred a bit.
The flick, as the terrible title might suggest, is about a fairly
young shluby guy going out with a B-list actress who eventually gives
him the flick. He takes the break-up badly, and finds that meaningless
sex and lots of crying does nothing to assuage his pain. When his no-
ex Sarah (Kristen Bell) is dumping him, he=92s naked, and refuses to put
clothes on in the vain hope that somehow it will prevent her from
leaving him.
But even showing his three-piece suite to the world (and to us, the
audience) can=92t stop the blonde starlet from kicking him to the kerb.
You see, he is emotionally and physically naked, displaying to us how
defenceless he is in the face of such sorrow.
What a bold, new age of the cinema we are entering. Behold New Cinema
Apatow Man: he=92s smutty and a bit immature, but now he=92s not afraid to
cry and cry and cry like a little girl with a skinned knee.
That=92s dramatic complexity, right there. On the advice of a friend who
rarely seems that friendly, Pete takes a break from LA and the cop
forensic show he does the music for that Sarah also stars in, and goes
for a holiday to a resort in Hawaii that Sarah used to talk about all
the time.
Lo and behold, whoda thunkit? Sarah and her new partner, British rock
star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) are also at the exact same resort. So
now not only does Pete have to continue to try to pick up the pieces
of his broken bitch heart, he has to do it publicly and in the
reflected glow of his former partner=92s full view.
By the way, Whoda Thunkit was a famous female playwright in the 1930s,
whose most successful work was Blind Tiger Pulling Suds on the Side,
which focused on the perils and pitfalls of a Depression and
Prohibition-era family trying to make a go of it through difficult,
union-dominated times. Nicole Kidman is attached to star and is
demanding an Oscar in advance in the uplifting lead role of a blind
and deaf matchstick seller with fourteen kids to look after, one of
them played by a bag of liposuctioned fat removed from Rene Zellweger
after she played Bridget Jones in those awful films. And yes Nicole
Kidman=92s Virginia Woolf stunt-nose from The Hours will be making a
comeback.
A feisty young lady working the counter at the resort, Rachel (Mila
Kunis) takes pity on sad sack Peter and tries to help him out of his
self-created predicament. Perhaps out of pity at first, or perhaps she
recognises in him a kindred spirit damaged by a previous relationship
who=92s also stuck in a rut due to inertia. Whatever the reason, however
unlikely it is, she chooses to allow Pete into her life and presumably
her body.
But is Peter ready to move on? He keeps mooning over Sarah even as he
flashes back to moments during his relationship he never thought about
that much, which stand in stark contrast with how rose-coloured his
glasses are regarding the relative crapiness of it. He starts off
hating Sarah=92s new beau, seeing as Aldous is beloved by millions, mega-
wealthy and so ridiculously cool and disorientated that he=92s like a
cross between Captain Jack Sparrow and, well, Captain Jack Sparrow if
he were a rock star instead of a pirate.
He comes to appreciate Aldous only when he realises that the addled
rock star doesn=92t really give a damn about Sarah anyway. And Sarah, on
the other hand, has problems of her own, not least of which is the
honest admission that she tried damn hard to make their relationship
work, which he was oblivious to the entire time.
Also, she has the problem of aging. See, she=92s nearly 30, and, well,
that brings its own uniquely Hollywoodian perils.
In a strange interlude, the actress playing Sarah Marshall, played by
Kristen Bell, talks about a terrible movie she was in recently, which
sounds suspiciously like the movie Pulse which starred, you guessed it
and didn=92t care, Kristen Bell. The other characters take turns ripping
the shit out of the film the actress actually starred in, as she makes
excuses as to why the crappy horror flick wasn=92t a complete sack of
crap. How about them insider references, eh?
As is key to these films, there=92s lots of smutty adult humour, which
goes more for the sexual angle rather than the crude angle so favoured
by children everywhere. Little of it really made me laugh that much,
since I am ever so mature and ever so haughty in my lofty maturity.
The thing is, even if it isn=92t rib-ticklingly funny, I appreciate that
kind of stuff more because a flick operating on that level has to work
a lot harder.
The film just meanders along without any real impetus or momentum,
moving towards the same kind of ending these flicks have in an
obligatory, machine-precision manner. It didn=92t bug me too much.
Despite getting distracted by the main guy=92s acting, or lack of
acting, he=92s endearing enough so that you want to like him, even if
he=92s a bit clumsy. The other actors, especially Mila Kunis, who was a
tremendous surprise, ably support in roles that vary in their
usefulness and humour.
Jonah Hill, the creepy obese guy from other Apatow movies, is just as
creepy, obese and unfunny as always. I find him really disturbing and
anti-funny, and I just wish people would stop casting him in films. I
have seen tumours removed from people=92s bodies that are funnier and
better actors.
Mila Kunis surprised me the most because I had been convinced for
years that she was a dead-eyed moron from her work on That 70=92s Show.
The most disturbing thing about speaking of that show is not the
admission that I was wrong about something, since I=92m wrong about
stuff all the time: it=92s that I=92m essentially admitting to having
watched the show repeatedly. It is truly a shameful thing to admit, I
know it. Suffice to say that nothing she did on that show prepared me
for how good she can be in one of these roles.
It=92s lazy, in a lot of respects, but it also works. It feels like it
was cobbled together from days and days worth of footage going
nowhere, and it really doesn=92t have that much to say about anything.
Unless you count Get Over It and Follow Your Dreams as radical, new
messages for the masses. I have to admit that the culmination of
Peter=92s dream, which is a puppet Dracula musical was pretty funny in a
completely dorky way. And I did walk out of the cinema with a smile on
my face.
But then the smile faded, and I just carried on living my life.
Sandro - 6 ways in which forgetting this film is very likely out of 10
--
=93When life gives you lemons, just say 'Fuck the lemons,' and bail=94 =96
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
http://movie-reviews.com.au
|
