Reviewed by Alicia Glass
Review Rating: 5
Heartbroken Peter takes a Hawaiian vacation in order to get over selfish tv actress Sarah Marshall, who of course shows up in Hawaii with her new rock star Brit of a boyfriend.
This is another one of those movies that can only be summed up with one word: awkward. Peter is a musician who provides the background music for a CSI-style show that his turning-famous girlfriend Sarah is the star of, and of course Sarah has let stardom go to her head and takes as her new beau Alduous Snow, singer for some British band. That’s how the movie starts off – with Sarah dumping Peter, him being all sorts of torn up about it, and deciding with the help of his best friend to take a Forgetting Sarah Marshall vacation in Hawaii. This film didn’t even start off funny, at least from my point of view; poor Peter is genuinely sad at losing the girl he thinks he loved dearly and is a pathetic wreck about it, sure. But what’s funny about that? Things continue on their merry way – Sarah and Alduous show up in Hawaii and Peter tries, with the help of the saucy desk clerk Rachel, to be cordial if not polite to his ex, which of course backfires at every turn. As Peter and Rachel grow closer, Sarah and Alduous grow farther apart, until the night of battling sex (oh you wish I was kidding), and Alduous tells Rachel that he hasn’t mentioned his having herpes due to the fact that it isn’t inflamed at the moment. Things do continue on after that, but that was the point that the movie lost any interest for me, because herpes and all other STDs simply are not funny. Sarah tries disastrously to get back together with Peter, it doesn’t work, Peter attempts to confess the botched conciliation to Rachel who of course gets mad at him. Peter goes back to his home where he finally does make his dream of a puppet opera of Dracula (!) a reality, and Rachel comes to see it, where they reconnect.
Kristin Bell as Sarah Marshall was more or less fine, I just couldn’t help hating the character they gave her to play. Russell Brand stars as Alduous Snow, and again, the character was a bit too odd, even for me. Jason Segel is pretty good as main character Peter, I was a bit surprised that he went for the full frontal nudity shot, no matter how short it might have been. (The scene!) The only bright spot of acting was Mila Kunis as desk clerk Rachel, and that may have been due to the great contrast between her character and Sarah Marshall.
Some people like Judd Apatow’s stuff. This one, however, is not for me.