Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Review

I have seen far too much of Jason Segel’s penis today. Not that I can imagine there’s any day that would be a good day for me to see his penis, or to see it any more than I have seen it today. Regardless, I have seen too much of it, specifically after viewing Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I mention this because it really is the only bad thing I can think to say about the movie, which is an incredibly realistic yet comical look at breakups and the process that people go through when they’re dumped, with some good old-fashioned raunch comedy thrown in for good measure.

Written and starring Jason Segel, the movie tells the story of Peter, a composer who has been dating actress Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) for five years. Both work for a hit police drama TV show, allowing lots of jokes made at the expense of the overloaded C.S.I. genre. Within minutes of the movie’s start, Sarah dumps Peter, devastating the musician into a downward spiral that leads to him sleeping with every girl he meets and eventually attempting to get away from his life by taking a vacation to Hawaii… where Sarah and her new boyfriend also happen to be vacationing.

The movie keeps things moving at a brisk pace from the get-go. We get to know Peter quickly. Within five minutes we’ve seen him naked (including full-frontal nudity) and within six minutes Sarah has broken up with him. The pace does start to slow down a bit as Peter meets Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis) and starts a new potential relationship with her, but that’s only to allow for some wonderfully awkward moments like a dinner between Peter, Rachel, Sarah, and her boyfriend, rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), where he shares his philosophy of being allowed to sleep with any woman he meets.

Anyone who has seen How I Met Your Mother or Veronica Mars is well acquainted with the talent of the primary cast members, although Kunis may surprise some people since she was so limited in That 70’s Show and Brand is a relative newcomer to American audiences. As a film produced in part by Judd Apatow, I expected to see a lot more of his regulars and was surprised not to see Seth Rogen put in an appearance (Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd both have small supporting roles which are well executed). The true standout of the supporting players is Jack MacBrayer, who has been making audiences laugh as Kenneth the page on 30 Rock and shows a more risqué edge to a similar character here as a newlywed virgin on his honeymoon.

The true strength of the film isn’t the cast, although they wind up benefiting from it. The strength is in the characters built by Segel’s script. The writer has crafted such well-rounded characters that there’s no clear cut villain for the story. Sure Sarah has broken Peter’s heart, but she’s really not a bad person; she just has some character flaws, as does Peter. Even Brand’s musician, who had been sleeping with Sarah for some time before she dumped Peter, isn’t completely villainous and has some redeeming qualities. Segel creates characters that are realistic. Let’s face it – when you’ve been dumped, there’s a part of you that still loves the person you lost, and that’s very easy to believe here because all of the characters have such depth. The actors have a lot to work with, resulting in stronger performances and making the whole story a success.

On top of such strong characters, Segel clearly has a good mind for comedy. Here it’s executed without any sort of limitations, from his shocking nudity to free discussion of adult concepts. It’ll be interesting to see what he can do in the future with his plans of a Muppet movie (which would require a very different comedic style than Sarah Marshall) but I have full faith that he can pull it off. He gets that the characters need to be strong and not just an excuse for a punchline – a good lesson I suspect he’s picked up from Apatow.

With a strong story and complex characterizations, Forgetting Sarah Marshall could easily earn the honor of being one of this year’s best comedies, although it’s potential audience may be limited a bit by its raunchy approach. Here’s hoping Segel can continue to craft stories like this in the future, although ironically a little less nudity might give the actor/writer a bit more exposure.

Horton Hears a Who! - Review

Dr. Seuss’s stories are simple, and their length is not long. His stories are short, yet their message is strong. They’re also spectacularly unsuited for any Hollywood adaptation, as unsuited as I am for Dr. Seuss rhyming and alliteration. They’ve tried it before with live action, and with Horton at least they’ve finally learned that lesson and left the prosthetics abandoned. To make a Seuss story work as a film you’ve got to stuff it with filler, and there’s plenty of that to be found in this new animated attempt at filming his masterful work. It’s a success as a movie, but it still isn’t quite perfect as a Seuss adaptation.

The fact that the movie is freed from the bounds of human actors and props helps though, and Horton Hears a Who! is nearly as visually creative and fun as the Seuss drawings it’s based on. It’s the story that occasionally misses, since they’re building a 90 minute film out of a book that’s really only a few pages. The core of Seuss’s world is there though. This is still the story of an elephant named Horton who discovers a spec. On the spec is a town called Whoville, and its mayor can hear Horton when he talks. Horton vows to protect the tiny spec and its inhabitants, and finds himself harangued and ostracized by the other animals of his jungle who can’t hear the Whos’ voices and so insist he’s a dangerous kook.

Jim Carrey, who achieved dubious success doing a live action version of The Grinch a few years ago, voices Horton. It’s a strange choice really, I thought the reason we liked Jim was for his facial contortions, not his vocal veracity. But he’s capable as Horton, sort of sappy and silly, which plays into the film’s mostly cartoony vibe. Funny is the name of the game here, and Horton Hears a Who! sometimes pushes the moral center of Seuss’s story to the background in favor of being wacky. At least though, it really is funny. The visual gags are entertaining and Steve Carell, as the voice of The Mayor of Whoville is both touching and hilarious. That balances out a lot of the unnecessary pop culture references, MySpace jokes, and Jim Carrey riffing which in a lesser film, might have sent the whole thing straight to the bottom.

In the end, they hang on to enough of Seuss’s smart, sweet message about the importance of life, tolerance, and standing up for what you believe in to leave the movie something substantive to wrap all that silliness around. Horton Hears a Who is fun and enthusiastic, but also sweet and affecting in all the right moments. If you can forgive it for a momentary lapse in the last thirty seconds which turns the whole thing into a bizarre, rock opera musical number, you’ll find a lot to like in Horton Hears a Who!. Dr. Seuss will always be better in book form, but Hollywood has found a way to turn his work into a movie without falling flat.

Knocked Up - Review

Judd Apatow gets guys. For years men in movies have been cookie cutter presentations of ferocious might or sensitive driveling. In his movies, Apatow brings a different breed of man: one who falls between the stereotypes of the sensitive man and the ubermensch and paints a complete picture of just how complex men can be.

Nowhere is this more true than in Apatow’s latest flick, Knocked Up. The 40-Year Old Virgin director tackles the worst nightmare for the single man – having a one night stand with a girl and then finding out that you’ve knocked her up. It’s a simple enough concept for a story, but thanks to Apatow’s delightfully complex characters and hilariously irreverent approach to the subject matter, Knocked Up runs the chance of being one of the most brilliant comedies of the decade.

Seth Rogen, who was one of The 40-Year Old Virgin’s highlights, takes center stage for Knocked Up, playing the epitome of irresponsibility and young male foolishness. Ben Stone (Rogen) lives in an apartment with four of his friends, smoking pot and insulting each other. His only prospective income is from a website he and his friends are putting together that lists when celebrities get naked in movies. For someone like Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl), a successful up and coming reporter for E! Television, Ben would be the last choice for a boyfriend, let alone someone to have a kid with. Yet after the two hook up after a drunken meeting in a nightclub, that’s exactly the position they find themselves in.

The idea of suddenly and surprisingly being pregnant has been done before in movies like Nine Months so it’s not the most original concept. In fact, the situation is practically cliché fodder for sitcoms. In Apatow’s capable hands, however, the plot becomes a way to shed some light on the male psyche and show that we aren’t all dick and fart jokes… although that certainly makes up part of who we are. Rogen’s character is joined by a smorgasbord of previous Apatow actors, including Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, and Martin Starr, as they make stupid wagers and carry on pointless conversations stoned out of their minds. Before the stoner humor can wear too thin, Ben starts buddying around with Alison’s brother in law, Pete (Paul Rudd), who Apatow uses to reveal some of man’s biggest fears and problems with being married with children.

Considering the nature of Ben’s personality, crude humor is prevalent through the picture, but somehow it’s an endearing trait for the character. Between pranks, like farting on each other’s pillows, there are some poignant moments about how these characters view life; moments audience members will be able to connect with. Rudd’s Pete compares life to an endless episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” without the humor. Ben goes off on a tirade about how women have been giving birth to babies for centuries without the damn “how to” books out there he’s being harassed for not reading. Apatow shows an absolute mastery for balancing humor and drama, never letting the weight of the story become pervasive, but always keeping the idea in mind that the subject matter is serious. These are people bringing another life into the world after all.

The only thing keeping Knocked Up from becoming an instant classic is how dated the movie already is, even in its release. There are pop culture references every couple of minutes and, as culture changes, those references will become obsolete and some parts of the movie may lose meaning. Apatow did his best to keep those references as up to date as possible, including the characters gong to see Spider-Man 3, which has only been in theaters for a month, but the movie will inevitably be dated. Still, Knocked Up is the strongest movie from Apatow so far and definitely the best comedy this year.

Superbad - Review

Superbad is stuck together out of pretty standard stuff. It’s another iteration on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High clone genre, another story about a pair of losers who want to get laid before they leave high school and set off for college. It tries, valiantly, to set itself apart from the pack by making the bosom buddy friendship between those losers the focal point of the film as a way of getting us invested in them, but personally I never bought it as anything other than a slightly more entertaining than usual teen raunch-com.

The losers in question are Seth and Evan, played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera respectively. Superbad follows them on a night of hunting booze and poon, that as they so often do, goes totally awry and leaves them lying in vomit somewhere. Both Hill and Cera are supremely talented comedic performers, but much of the time they’re completely wasted here on dialogue that can’t seem to get over a bad case of Tourette’s syndrome. It’s an R-rated raunch comedy so you expect a lot of vile, over the top profanity but Superbad takes it to an entirely new level; substituting frequent uses of the words “cock”, “balls”, and “fuck” for actual jokes. Profanity simply for the sake of profanity is only funny for about 5 minutes, unless you’re under 12 and have never watched cable television. Sadly, that seems to be all there is to the story of Seth and Evan, and while they have a few funny moments most of it is lost in superfluous cursing that says nothing and soon wears out its welcome.

Luckily, Seth and Evan aren’t the whole story here. Superbad seems as if it was written to make them the focus of the film, but somewhere in the editing room I suspect someone wised up and realized they needed something else. That something else is their third-wheel friend McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who starts out the movie as a footnote but by the end of the film his sub plot is the one that will have you rolling in the aisles. While Seth and Even wander around town screaming “balls!” at people, McLovin encounters two out of control cops played hilariously by Seth Rogen and Bill Heder. They take him on a whirlwind tour of irresponsibility and police brutality; boozing, beating, and shooting their way across the city in a wanton orgy of policeman gone wild with McLovin along for the ride in the back seat. What starts out as a subplot soon becomes the comedic center of the movie, and while Cera and Hill’s story is only mildly entertaining McLovin and his cop buddies are killer funny.

It may be that since he had a hand in writing the script, Seth Rogen is simply better at writing for himself than he is at crafting words for other actors. Or, since movies like this so often involve a lot of improv, it may well be that Rogen and Heder are just a helluva lot better at it than Hill and Cera. Whatever the reason, Superbad ends up being a fairly standard teen raunch romp with some really funny parts involving a completely unrelated subplot. It’s worth sitting through Hill and Cera to get to Rogen, Heder, and McLovin.