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September 8th, 2008
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Kicked to the curb

Goofy guys find redemption in Apatow's latest
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June 18th, 2008 issue

By Rachel Shimp

COURTESY PHOTO
Sexy crimefighter Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) and beau (Russell Brand), beachside.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall


Directed by Nicholas Stoller
With Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Bill Hader and Paul Rudd

For the Post
Being dumped by someone you love is devastating. You might listen to Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” over and over, or cry when Heidi Klum says “auf Wiedersehen” to a contestant on Project Runway. Some entirely unromantic item your ex-lover bought you might take on a heartbreaking significance. In the new comedy by producer Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), good guy Peter Bretter takes rejection like a girl. Instead of crying into his Häagen- Dazs, he cries after rebound sex.
Jason Segel, who wrote Knocked Up, stars as Peter, who gets his heart knocked out. There was some discussion in The Prague Post office trying to puzzle out the Czech title of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which is Kopačky. Literally “football boots,” it can also represent being “kicked to the curb.” It happens to Peter while he’s naked and vulnerable, which makes his pleas to girlfriend Sarah (Kristen Bell) all the more humiliating.
She’s not a bad person; she’s just tired of him sitting on the couch. And everyone knows that living and working together can be a recipe for disaster. He composes the soundtrack for a TV show in which she stars as a “sexy crimefighter.” They have a Los Angeles house that looks realistic for their ages and professions, filled with the junk any long-term couple might have.
Prudes, cover your ears. Segel’s script gets away with being unbelievably crass while not actually saying anything obscene. When two characters talk about needing to “B my L on someone’s T’s,” it’s the kind of dialogue that will sail right past the audience it would most offend. When sexual approaches to self-therapy don’t cure Peter’s depression, he takes off for a vacation in Hawaii.
Guess who’s booked into the same resort? Sarah has picked up a ridiculous British glam rocker named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), who leads a band called Infant Sorrow. Their album is titled Her Majesty’s Pleasure. Like Peter, he’s a pretty regular-looking guy, but with the dangerous combination of charisma and a devil-may-care attitude. He blows off an adoring resort staffer (Jonah Hill), but is more hilarious than evil. (Brand is a famous UK TV personality who’s been fired from numerous jobs in real life for, well, being ridiculous.) Peter meets a bunch of other dudes who guide him on the road to recovery, including a spaced-out surfing instructor (Paul Rudd) and a frustrated newlywed.
They all have some kind of issue, but the underlying theme is to take responsibility for yourself and work it out. Waiter Kemo (Taylor Wily) says, “It is that easy. I’m from South Central and now I live in Oahu and can name 300 kinds of fish.” And front desk hottie Rachel (Mila Kunis) tells Peter, “If you hate something, change it. Don’t dwell.”
These movies always feel like a collaboration between the producer, the director (in this case, Nicholas Stoller) and a revolving cast of actors/writers that first came together on the late ’90s American TV series Freaks and Geeks. Maybe it’s that collaborative vibe that gives each one a sense of freshness and improvisation. By now, fans of this style know what they’re going to get. Sometimes the gags work and sometimes they don’t, but that’s life. All of the participants are fairly young and bring an obvious kamikaze attitude to their work.
Apatow’s last film, Superbad, also showed men behaving emotionally. It dealt with the largely unspoken pain of breaking up with your friends. Women sometimes complain that Apatow’s (and his writers’) female characters aren’t as fleshed out or as interesting as the men. But I’ll take his peek into the male psyche as a trade-off. No other filmmaker in 2008 deals with the topic of platonic love so often and so funnily.
Rachel Shimp can be reached at rshimp@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (18/06/2008):

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