Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Locker Room Chic Flick

Peter (Jason Segel from TV's How I Met Your Mother) is a bit adrift. He's a musician who putzes about his apartment in his pajamas eating kid's cereal out of a huge mixing bowl. Creatively he's stuck, his music just filler for his girlfriend Sarah Marshall's TV show. When she gives him the heave-ho, he's crushed and thinks escaping to Hawaii will help him heal. In true romantic movie style, he runs into Sarah and her new Euro-trash rocker boyfriend. Comedic tragedy moments unfold.

At it's heart, this film is basically every female-focused romantic comedy from Gary Marshall fodder to Bridgette Jones. So what is new with this formula? Segel has switched the struggling girl looking for love with the dumped guy and smuts up the dialog and nudity I can only assume to bring in the guy audience - Knocked Up and 40-Year Old Virgin style. Some of this is brilliant - Peter is completely bare and exposed literally (best use of full-frontal nudity I've seen on film!) when Sarah (Kristin Bell from TV's Veronica Mars) breaks up with him. Later in the film this same device is used for a completely different means, showing openness instead of vulnerability. At other times the smut is just raunchy as if the guys are just trying to crack each other up with locker room antics - simulated sex with giant chess pieces, the Euro boyfriend (Russel Brand) trying to hump anything in sight. Unfortunately many of these flaws come up with the supporting cast of character, perhaps during their improv riffing that supposedly happens on set. No one was horrible in the supporting parts but Russell Brand was particularly atrocious as the over-the-top leathered-up rock star with the British accent. He played the Lothario so overtly, it was hard to not run screaming from the theater. If the film kept focused on the solid writing and character development, I think this film could have moved from the frivolous-but-fun made-for-TV category over to a classically great romantic comedy. And yes, the character really do evolve - Peter does find some creative motivation and the women aren't just doormats, even though they are, like most male fantasies, super-gorgeous - much more so than the men. So perhaps this is an interim step for writer Jason Segel and, if paired with a good director and editor, his next film will move out of the men's stall and into celluloid gold.