What's so funny about heartbreak?
The latest Judd Apatow hit, 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' is predictable but still keeps you laughing along the way
The movies that come out of the Judd Apatow comedy factory are the real revenge of the nerds. In them the human male at his most woebegone manages to score with women who in the real world wouldn't touch him with a pair of tweezers. The heroes are pudges, mouthbreathers, loners, stoners - the average guy on a less-than-average day. It's a hell of a fantasy, and audiences of both genders seem to love it. (So why hasn't anyone made a movie about a schlumpy woman with dandruff attracting a himbo? Because it wouldn't make any money. Figure that one out.)
"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is the latest factory product, and like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," and "Superbad" before it, it delivers belly laughs that explode from the meeting of wit and shock. You've probably already heard about the bit early on when the main character gets dumped by his girlfriend right after he's come out of the shower, dropping his towel in dismay. The scene's rudely hilarious but painful, too; if you've ever been thrown over, that's exactly how exposed you feel. It's full frontal male masochism.
Star Jason Segel also wrote the script, so presumably he knows this turf. His character, Peter Bretter, is a Hollywood layabout who writes cheesy music scores for the hit TV crime show his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), stars in. Maybe they were a cute couple before she got famous, but the gap between her goals (a feature film) and his (wear the same sweatpants for a week) has become an abyss.
There's another man, too, a prat of a British pop star named Aldous Snow, played with creative weirdness by British comedian Russell Brand. Peter looks at this idiot rock god and knows he hasn't got a chance.
The early scenes, with the hero pinballing between revenge sex and wallowing, are funny partly because they're preposterous - the movie locates the massive guy vanity behind self-pity. Then "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" sends Peter to a Hawaiian resort that turns out to be the same one Sarah and Aldous are visiting, and the canned plotting begins.
Debut director Nicholas Stoller makes the pace brisk and the look tourist-generic, but the governing sensibility is that of producer Apatow: Keep things smartly scurrilous and surround the leads with oddballs. Peter's wires get crossed by a growing romance with Rachel, the resort's social director who's likably played by Mila Kunis ("That '70s Show") as a tomboy in a supermodel's body. The real fun, though, is on the sidelines, with character actors Jack Brayer (Kenneth on "30 Rock"), Da'Vone McDonald, and Taylor Wily shooting off their mouths.
Also present are Apatow regulars Jonah Hill (as a waiter obsessed with Snow) and Paul Rudd (as a brain-dead surfing instructor). The former is one-note, the latter blissfully comic; Rudd has made a career niche out of burying his matinee idol looks in riotous supporting roles.
That's the backward genius of the Apatow comedies - they cast character actors as heroes and relegate the handsome dudes to comic support. Brand rises to the occasion, making Aldous a genially snotty reworking of Brit pop-brats like Pete Doherty and the Gallagher brothers. He's a lout, but even his rival has to love him for it.
Segel holds onto our sympathy, too, even as Peter wistfully performs songs from his pet project, a Dracula puppet musical, to an appalled Rachel. A graduate of the class of "Freaks and Geeks" and a star of "How I Met Your Mother," he's all wrong as a leading actor - big and squishy and covered with moles. He knows there's nothing sillier than a large man crying like a little girl, though, and he degrades himself with soul.
Ultimately, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is ordinary in a way "The 40-Year-Old-Virgin" and even "Knocked Up" weren't. It doesn't push into interestingly taboo areas or renovate a tired genre as "Superbad" did to the teen sex-comedy. I'm not sure Segel wants it to. Still, there's a sadness in this actor's eyes the movie doesn't choose to get near. If we're lucky, maybe he'll do something with it someday.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/ movies/blog.
