Get over it

Peter (Jason Segel) plays a freshly dumped guy who escapes to Hawaii in the romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. (Glen Wilson/Universal Studios)

Here’s a typical, multi-tiered joke from writer-producer-director Judd Apatow and his disciples in the new comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A young but getting-older guy — a gold-hearted schlub stranded on the shore across from his maturity — is wearing a stupid, fedora-type hat. His crass but unflaggingly supportive friend makes a joke about it. Joke one: Tells him he looks like a member of the Brat Pack. Joke two: What is he, an extra from Oliver Stone’s JFK? Joke three: Is he planning to sit in with the Buena Vista Social Club?

Same hat, three jokes, each drawn from the vast, useless depths of pop culture knowledge that make these guys who they are: smart losers. We swim in those seas, too, if the success of the Apatow formula — maximum gaggage per foot; crippled maleness; pop logorrhea — is any indication. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a more modest effort than Apatow products like The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad, but it’s still funnier than — well, what? I’m at a loss to name a recent comedy without the Apatow touch. You can even blame him (a little — he produced) for the deadly unfunny Drillbit Taylor.

Marshall is written by Apatow chorus member Jason Segel (and directed, with an utter lack of flair, by Nicholas Stoller). Segel played the gentle giant and porn-site team leader in Knocked Up, and stars in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. His emergence furthers the impression that he and actors Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, etc. form some kind of sweaty, happy family, with Apatow paternally nudging each son forward: Go on, overlooked one: It’s your turn! And yet, no matter who has the spotlight, the films feel sort of the same.

Despite its considerable charms, Forgetting Sarah Marshall definitely suffers for being last at the bong party. Segel plays Peter, a chronic underachiever and Froot Loops-on-the-couch dude who prefers underwear to outerwear. His girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), is the harbinger of heartbreak that will help him step up to adulthood. She’s a successful actress on a CSI-type show (starring Billy Baldwin as the wonderfully named Detective Hunter Rush) for which Peter composes the music. When Sarah returns to New York from L.A. to dump him, Peter takes the news standing up, and naked. Turns out there is still one taboo left in this post-Borat world, and if bravery is the, uh, measure of success, then Segel succeeds with his minutes-long full-frontal joke. Is the much-discussed scene funny? Yes, because discomfort is funny, but like all penis jokes (and the film), it goes on too, uh, long.

From left, Matthew (Jonah Hill), Rachel (Mila Kunis), Peter (Jason Segel), Aldous (Russell Brand) and Sarah (Kristen Bell) share an awkward moment in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. (Glen Wilson/Universal Studios)

To recover from his loss, Peter starts shagging every semi-awake babe in New York. It doesn’t help, so he heads to Hawaii, where the gods of cinematic plot contrivance have converged at the luau: Sarah is staying at the same resort — and she’s not alone. Now is the moment to overlook the awkward as-if scenario, and indulge in the delights of the many bit players who appear from the lush landscape. Like Cinderella’s little woodland friends lifting the hem of her train, they elevate the material.

Sarah’s new boyfriend is pop sensation Aldous Snow, a backcombed Brit in Jim Morrison-style sausage pants who writhes on stage like a Bikram yoga master. The character, with his save-Mother-Earth banter and vacant free-love ethos, could have been a total cliché, but in the hands of British comedian Russell Brand, he’s a total delight. The guy isn’t just a jerk; he surprises us with kindness (no one is all bad in the Apatow scheme of things) and captures a rock star’s breezy narcissism with precision.

Superbad’s Jonah Hill (consistently the least versatile Apatow player) has a small part as a hotel staffer, while tanned, blond Paul Rudd is hilarious and unrecognizable as a dim surf instructor who offers sage advice like: “When life gives you lemons, just say f--- the lemons and bail!” Peter is roused by this community of new friends to move on from Sarah, and begins to notice a fetching front desk clerk named Rachel (Mila Kunis).

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: The women in these movies get short shrift. There seems to be a nicely democratic division of jokes amongst the guys, and the ladies are tossed the leftovers. The eponymous Sarah is an unappealing, unknown character, a boring blonde with unfair bouts of psychopathic behaviour. Kunis also gets a PMS outburst, though the actress, liberated from the Siberia of That ’70s Show, has a kind of innate intelligence and preposterous beauty that still makes her very interesting to watch.

These may be films about men who don’t understand women, but the filmmakers, surely, know a thing or two about the subjects of their obsession. If the Apatow troupe is smart enough to have invented this little stage for itself — and placed some kind of inviolable plastic dome around it to keep out the Hollywood suits — they must be smart enough to hire a good female writer. Or — gasp! — perhaps they could even write a good woman character themselves? Doing so might rescue the Apatow gang from the rut they’re working towards, and that can only be supergood — for them, and for us.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall opens April 18.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.

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