There is a LOT of stuff on the two-disc collector’s edition DVD release of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, including both theatrical and extended unrated cuts of the film itself. Unfortunately, much like the movie, a lot of this stuff is just plain forgettable. For all the ballyhoo about the male nudity and political incorrectness, if anything, watching this one again only proved just how ho-hum it all truly is.
When composer Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is dumped by his famous television star girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell) he heads to Hawaii to hopefully get over her. Unfortunately for him, the starlet just happens to be their cavorting around the island with her new boyfriend British pop singer Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). On the pretext of simple friendship, Peter starts taking in the local color with sexy hotel receptionist Rachel (Mila Kunis), not even noticing that his constant infatuation with his ex is putting a stranglehold on a potential new romance with a lovely young woman who’s starting to fall for him.
In the theater, I found a lot of laughs here, even if wading through all of the ponderous meanderings and banal idiocies sometimes made it freakishly difficult to do so. The problem is, those funny bits aren’t so humorous on repeat viewings, and what worked so right the first time around now only sits there as rather benign and mildly inspiring filler separating all the parts I didn’t really care for.
Complaints aside, when this Judd Apatow production (directed by first-timer Nicholas Stoller) gets things right it does so brilliantly. I just wish it didn’t take so much effort and time to actually get to those moments, and as much respect and admiration I have for the nuts and bolts holding this together the final construction leaves one heck of a lot to be desired.
The main problem is with Segel. One of the star’s of “How I Met Your Mother,” the actor/screenwriter seems like an appealing enough guy and he’s got an easygoing charm that’s perfectly fine. I just didn’t feel like it was necessary to spend two hours with him, his flat line-readings drove me borderline insane. After a while I couldn’t help but start to wonder what two intelligent and sexy women like Sarah and Rachel would ever find so dynamically appealing about the man, nothing about this tiredly unappealing slob making me believe for a single second they’d fall so completely head over heals.
The movie does get better as it goes along, the second half in particular finding a decent enough rhythm to keep me from getting bored. The main reason for this is Brand. On the surface, he’s just another in a long line of romantic comedy boy-toy stereotypes, but as the movie progresses Brand makes the character come to alive. The guy is an outright revelation, and even watching this one again at home it wasn’t long before I found a bit of joy in all snidely sensuous lunacies coming out of the guy’s mouth.
Said lunacies rear their head in the film’s audio commentary as well, the star joining all three of his cast mates, Stoller, executive producer Rodney Rothman and producer Shauna Robertson to discuss the picture’s content. The thing is, like almost all commentary tracks featuring a plethora of people this one gets disjointed and difficult to listen to and after a while it all just dissolves into noise. I wanted to like this commentary, and sometimes Brand, Segel or Bell get in a good word or two, but in the end it all was much ado about nothing and if I hadn’t listened to it at all I wouldn’t have cared in the slightest.
As for the rest of the extras, there is a digital copy of the feature, the usual collection of deleted and extended scenes, a feature highlighting the supposed “best” lines in the film, the requisite gag reel, some video diaries, a couple versions of “Dracula’s Lament” (which gets dumber and dumber the more I think about it), videos of the cast auditions, some extra stuff with the puppets, a standard making-of featurette aired on Cinemax and another sampling of Brand tackling all of his character’s imbecilic absurdities.
There are some other great moments in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I just wish it didn’t take so much effort to get to all of it. The film far easier to respect for its nakedly fearless audacity (and for Brand’s bravura comedic performance) then it is to remember for anything else.
