• Tweet

Four out of Five stars
Running time: 108 mins

Enjoyable comedy with a smart script and likeable performances from all four leads.

What's it all about?
Jason Segel plays Peter, a musician who gets dumped by his girlfriend, TV star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), after a five year relationship. He's devastated and finds that he can't even throw himself into his work, because his main job is scoring her TV show.

On the advice of his best friend (Bill Hader), Peter takes a trip to Hawaii to try and forget Sarah, but things go horribly wrong when she shows up at the same hotel with her new boyfriend, British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), in tow. Fortunately, a welcome distraction is at hand in the form of Rachel (Mila Kunis), the hotel's cute receptionist.

The Good
Written by Segel himself, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is yet another film from the so-hot-right-now Judd Apatow stable (Knocked Up, Superbad, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and it delivers plenty of decent laughs whilst also making some sharply written observations about adult relationships. To that end, while the outcome of the film is never really in question, Segel's script delights in toying with the usual cliches, particularly in the case of Brand's character, who would normally be the bad guy but is infuriatingly likeable instead.

All four leads deliver superb performances, with Kunis and Brand basically stealing the film from its two ostensible leads. There's also terrific support from Apatow regulars such as Jonah Hill, Bill Hader and scene-stealer extraordinaire Paul Rudd (as a spaced-out surfer, who has the funniest line in the trailer).

The Bad
That said, the film suffers slightly because Segel doesn't quite have either the charisma or the comic timing that made fellow Apatow alumnus Seth Rogen such an unlikely romantic lead in Knocked Up. As a result, it's hard to see why either of the two female leads would be attracted to him in the first place.

Worth seeing?
In short, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is an enjoyable romantic comedy with several great gags and superb comic performances from its four leads. Recommended.