Last night me and fellow blogger Donald went to see the highly anticipated comedy ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall.’ The movie was hilarious as I expected and the cast seemed perfect. Jason Segel’s penis was pretty impressive, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill once again gave classic comedic performances, and newcomer Russell Brand was great. Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis also delivered great performances as the leading ladies in the movie. Everything was good. I was thoroughly enjoying myself while watching the movie, but when it was over I asked myself one question…which girl should have went with?
That is the one flaw this movie has and I had a problem with it. This my be a bit over-analytical on my part but if I’m viewing this as a film then I had a problem with the way the story unfolds toward the end. They never made Sarah Marshall (Bell) an evil enough character to the point where you definitely wanted him to end up with Rachel (Kunis). I still don’t know if I want him to be with Rachel. I felt very badly for Sarah when she broke down and tried to get him back. I just think Segel, in his writing, didn’t do a great job with completing Sarah’s story. The things unfolded Peter (Segel) could have easily gotten back together with Sarah and you wouldn’t have felt badly about it. You actually might have felt pretty great.
In this movie it would have made a whole lot of sense for Sarah to turn out to be awful and Peter’s choice between the women be an easy one. But it clearly wasn’t. Sarah genuinely missed him and wanted to get back together with him. In the script Segel seemed like he was going to give us a reason to hate Sarah when it was discovered that she was cheating on him for a year but then he bailed her out with the reason of him not taking care of herself. And in her explanation she was tearing up and was genuinely upset and angry at him for this. It was also an excuse that Peter himself in the movie seemed to agree with and accept.
After all of this Segel still dug the characters into a deeper hole when he accepted oral sex from Sarah at the end, albeit only 10-15 seconds he still took it. This could have been a reason for Rachel to not want to end up with him, then he would have had nobody when both women really wanted him.
Basically it was a great movie but it did have this one flaw that I really couldn’t help but think about when the movie was over. It was still a great comedy but it had its problems.
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April 24, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Don Hohner
I must agree. My only other complaint would be that food is not allowed after 9:15 in East Brunswick malls. Nathans will produce food for you, but not at the expense of putting forth effort. Great comedy but if I wasn’t starving to death, the last hour of the film could have been enjoyed more by me. not much more, but more.
May 1, 2008 at 12:37 pm
geist0
Hey, your blog is linked in with mine for some reason, because I also wrote a review of FSM.
In my review, I actually made a similar comment about that problem, but I have to disagree with you about the cause. I don’ think it’s that the writing was bad, I think it’s that Kristen Bell is just THAT GOOD. I think that by adding layers to them breaking up, rather than just a standard “she’s a cheating whore” is one of the few ways that the film was able to avoid being a completely conventional date movie. It wasn’t as simple as that… but Sarah was still a cheating whore. And when she went back to Peter, I knew in my head that it was because she was a silly, vulnerable girl who didn’t know what she wanted, selfishly going back to her safety blanket. But Bell is so good, that I didn’t care. I would have taken her back, knowing she would cheat on me again… because.. damn… she’s amazing.
And I have to give much respect to Mila Kunis, because if a less charming or beautiful actress had taken her place, the movie wouldn’t have worked.
Thats just my opinion.