DVD Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Unrated Collector’s Edition

When your significant other begins a sentence with the phrase “we need to talk,” or “look, you know I love you but,” or any derivation thereof, not only is it code that a breakup is in your near future, but unlike Jason Segel’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it’s probably best if you’re fully dressed.

Although his girlfriend of five and a half years, Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell), the TV star on a sexy crime scene show, pleas with him to pick up his post-shower towel or go get dressed, the devastated Peter Bretter (Segel) pitifully rationalizes that if he were to put on clothes then the whole situation would become real and it’s over. Unfortunately it turns out that Sarah’s resolution to end their relationship doesn’t necessarily follow Peter’s impromptu rules (that we can all relate to when trying desperately to hold onto something like a kid in a toy store) and soon enough he’s good and dumped.

A struggling musician, Peter is now unable to continue providing the score to Sarah’s show with zero melody and a preference for “just dark, ominous tones” without attacking the studio screen in anguish fearing that she’s traded up for an affair with her handsome costar Billy Baldwin. Soon Peter seeks gender stereotypical comfort by engaging in meaningless one night stands with whatever freaky skank will take him home. After the first one ends in tears — Peter’s tears, that is — Peter rushes to his pediatrician out of fear that he’s been given a disease. And although he doesn’t quit trying to forget Sarah in the arms of strangers, eventually he retreats into a depression of listening to Sinead O’Conner’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” in a grimy apartment, trying to burn everything that reminds him of her, and refusing to delete all of the photos of his ex stored on his computer. Now figuratively at rock bottom after a much needed intervention by his best friend, soon Peter takes his friend’s advice to get the hell out of Dodge.

However, instead of hitting Vegas or some other dark place where you can hide in corners and forget, Peter decides to visit the most romantic vacation spot on Earth, journeying to Hawaii to the exact same location that Sarah always talked about. Of course, this being a comedy from the Apatow gang, sure enough, Sarah is there as well, vacationing with her new lover, an obnoxious, self-involved, tattooed, British rock star named Aldous (Russell Brand). Seven years sober and prone to giving odd lectures about his right to basically screw anything that moves, Aldous is the anti-Peter who unlike our sad-sack hero, would never have withstood a relationship with Sarah’s emasculating diva demands of holding her purse at awards shows or stepping out of photos on the red carpet.

Article Author: Jen Johans

Jen is a life-long film buff frequently dubbed a "Walking Movie Encyclopedia.” While earning a degree in Film Studies, she joined AFI and IFP. A three-time national award-winning writer, Jen also runs her site Film Intuition as well as its Review …

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