Cynical Cinema

Romantic comedies are one of those genres that make me cringe just thinking about them.  They often involve Hugh Grant or Meg Ryan and some crying.  There is always some major event or misunderstanding that takes place twenty-one minutes before the end of the film that shakes the foundation of the relationship we’re watching, and of course it gets resolved within that 21 minutes and everyone lives happily ever after.  And girls laugh, and then cry, and then laugh again as they watch.  And I usually curl up in a ball and try to suppress my rage.  This time, however, this was not the case. 

With Forgetting Sarah Marshall, my girlfriend did indeed laugh and cry.  But that was because she laughed until she cried.  And her sides hurt.  And mine too.  This movie is absolutely hilarious.  Judd Apatow (of Knocked Up and 40-Year-Old Virgin fame) produced this film, directed by Nick Stoller.  It stars Jason Segal as Peter, a guy who does the music for one of those CSI-type crime shows.  You know, the guy who plays the intense, moody music when David Caruso takes off his sunglasses?  He is dating Sarah Marshall, the star of that crime scene show.  Until, two minutes into the movie, she breaks up with him, leading to perhaps the funniest nude scene I have ever seen in a movie.  You see, he figures she can’t really break up with him until he puts clothes on to have a conversation.  So he just won’t put clothes on.  (Yes, it IS full-frontal male nudity, the best kind of comedic nudity!)

Then, with help from his not-terribly-helpful step-brother, Peter decides to go on vacation in order to get his mind off Sarah, and of course manages to end up at the exact same resort she does.  Sarah is there with her brand new boyfriend Elvis Snow, a huge international rock star played to perfection by the absolutely hilarious Russell Brand.  While Elvis is now Peter’s biggest rival for the affections of Sarah, and Peter should by all reasonable logic feel some resentment toward him, he ends up kind of liking him.  And so do we.  Brand plays Snow as such an un-self-conscious doofus of a rock star, that it is impossible to make him into the villain of the piece.  In fact, there really isn’t much of a villain at all, unless it’s Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) herself.

The supporting cast is amazing too, including Paul Rudd as a perma-stoned surfing instructor, John Hill as a waiter with a rather unhealthy obsession with Elvis Snow, and several gigantic men who serve as comedic relief in dozens of scenes.  The one scene here that I think perfectly exemplifies the reason this movie is so great is the scene where one of these gigantic Hawaiiam men recruits Peter to help him prepare the pig for dinner.  And Peter has to actually kill the pig.  In so many other movies, this scene would have lasted nine minutes.  And it would have squeezed every bit of comedy it possibly could out of the “he has to stab the pig and he hates it” joke.  But in this movie, the scene lasts maybe twenty seconds.  There is probably only twenty seconds of real, true hilarity to be derived from a scene such as this one, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall makes absolutely sure that those twenty seconds are the only ones we see.  It’s a remarkable demonstration of restraint in a 2008 R-rated romantic comedy.

And then there’s Mila Kunis.  Jackie from That 70s Show is a revelation in her role as the desk clerk at the Hawaiian hotel where Peter and Sarah and Elvis are staying.  And it’s pretty clear early on that she will become the catalyst for Peter to either get over his ex-girlfriend or break down completely.  The chemistry between Kunis and Segel is magnificent, and she is incredibly charming.  To the point that we, the audience, immediately root for her, no matter what her role will be in this movie.  Watching her face while Peter performs a song he wrote for a Dracula-themed puppet-show musical is just awesome.  Hilarious and charming and brilliant.  Just like this movie.

Paramount Home Entertainment releases Strange Wilderness on May 20th. It’s yet another movie featuring Adam Sandler’s buddies, from his Happy Madison production company. This group seems to be able to churn out thirty movies a year, of varying quality from below-average to insanely putrid. Strange Wilderness is somewhere in the middle. It’s dreadful. It’s the story of a bunch of Adam Sandler’s friends who attempt to revive their flagging TV wilderness show (Strange Wilderness) by tracking down and finding and filming Bigfoot. Which ends up being a series of animal attacks, idiotic jokes, stoner jokes, and more animal attacks. See, there’s this turkey, and it attacked a guy while he was peeing, so it’s on his junk. And it’s stuck there. And it’s a special turkey, so they can’t just chop it’s head off and kill it. So they have to massage it’s neck, and there’s this hot nurse who has to do it, which means she’s really massaging…oh, come on.

The cast is fairly good, because it is full of some quality comic actors. Justin Long, Steve Zahn, and the always-funny Jonah Hill, who has some decent moments. But the script is so thin that there is no reason for anything to actually happen. It’s just a series of toilet humour jokes and painful gags that grows tiresome right away. Shark attacks are played for humour, with incredibly poor results, the one hot girl is constantly pursued by a bunch of horny drunken idiots, with the intended effect of creating comedy. Once again, with poor results. And the final bigfoot gag is so badly done, obvious and, amazingly for this movie, underplayed that it negates the entire premise of the film. Strange Wilderness is neither strange, nor does it involve good wilderness. It’s just stupid, and is best ignored altogether. Which is why I didn’t write a longer review.