The ads tout this as “from the guys who brought you The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up”; those movies were both written and directed by Judd Apatow, but he’s only a producer here, and that doesn’t necessarily say much. However, in this case there is a certain similarity in the way the movies all feature guys who are well into adulthood but haven’t managed to grow up yet. They feature a certain level of frat-boy humor (played up in the TV ad) mixed with realistically played-out storylines and actual emotional content.
The star of the movie, Jason Segel (who appeared in Knocked Up) also wrote the script, making the opening, in which he gets dumped by the TV-star title character (Kristen Bell) while blubbering stark naked, kind of a bold move. Segel, an unconventional leading man (a la Seth Rogen in Knocked Up), looks like he could be Judge Reinhold’s younger brother. Anyway, off he goes to Hawaii, where, in a plot-convenient coincidence, she does too with her new boyfriend. Also conveniently, he manages to hook up with the hotel’s button-cute front desk clerk (Mila Kunis of That ’70s Show). The humor is mostly solid, though occasionally seeming forced, most notably when a restaurant host (Jonah Hill) loudly asks “Table for one?…We got a loner!” But the thing that makes the movie worth seeing is that it has a handle on the way relationships can fall apart. Sarah Marshall seems in danger of becoming a standard “bitch” character until, in a key scene, we get to hear her side of the story. Hence, while goofy, this is a movie for grown-ups after all.
IMDB link
viewed 3/13/08 (screening at Bridge); reviewed 4/19/08
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