‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ renders heartbreak hilarious

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

By Henry Sweets

Television music writer Peter Bretter is an average dude, with a beautiful celebrity girlfriend, Sarah Marshall. As the star of a television crime melodrama, Marshall casts a shadow over brooding boyfriend Bretter, who can usually be found on his sofa eating Fruit Loops or standing in front of the mirror watching his pectoral muscles. Photos of the couple show Bretter in the background, holding his girlfriend’s purse.

When Marshall dumps Bretter, his reaction is to drop his towel. The camera reveals, multiple times, a full frontal, flaccid view of his nude body. After kick-starting the comedy, Bretter continues to bare his humanity by being a pathetically loveable loser. Jason Segel, who plays Bretter, executes perfectly his role as an icon for every dude who has been dumped by some chick they thought was better than them.

To cleanse his moody spirit, Bretter decides to go to Hawaii, only to find his ex-girlfriend and her new man, arch-slacker, rock-star Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand. Brand perfectly pegs the over-intellectualized, out-there irrelevance of a celebrity artist, and is the source of the film’s heartiest laughs.

“Lose yourself in f***,” and “sodomize ignorance,” are a couple of his unforgettable slogans. The wispy, Zen-like Snow is the richest character in the film, knocking out the crowd with his cockney accent, hipster logic and abrasive forwardness.

Rachel, the girl at the front desk of the Hawaiian hotel who checks Bretter in, happens to be beautiful and down to earth. As you might expect she becomes Bretter’s new love interest, which is okay, because Mila Kunis, who plays Rachel, is very hot. In fact, hotter than Kristen Bell, who plays Marshall. Rachel and the other hotel workers come alive to provide a vivid backdrop for Bretter’s journey of boozing, crying and moseying into fateful situations.

The guy-gets-dumped comedy follows a Hollywood formula, but is elevated by well-developed characters and relentless sex puns that are neither too subtle nor over-the-top.

The humor does not get old, or feel immature, because of the believable characters that generate the laughs.

If you like to laugh, go see this movie. If you are offended by sex jokes, do not. Don’t expect predictable sophomoric humor or cheesy romance. The redemption that comes at the end of the film is actually uplifting, hilarious and somehow meaningful.

Courtesy
We are not losers. Really.

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‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ renders heartbreak hilarious | Planet JH News Article: Movie Reviews

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