Mila Kunis Steals The Show (Ok, Maybe My Heart) In Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Posted on | May 1, 2008 | 3 Comments
This review was originally published on Epinions.com.
If you want to see a romantic comedy that works well for date night, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a good choice. Some might find some of it a bit too vulgar, but it straddles the line well enough to where you’ll find the over the top stuff pretty funny. Maybe the one exception is having to see writer and star, Jason Segel’s pillypacker three times in the first 10 minutes.
The film is produced by Knocked Up director Judd Apatow and is very much in the same flavor of comedy as the films he’s directed. Segal was on Freaks And Geeks, which was an Apatow production as well as Knocked Up. Segal reminds me a little of Vince Vaughn, without all the slickness. If you took away a little of Vaughn’s gloss and put him on slow motion, you’d get Segal.
Segal plays Peter Bretter who is a music composer and creates the music for the dramatic scenes on a TV crime show, which stars his Hollywood “It Girl” girlfriend, Sarah Marshall, played by Kristen Bell. He’s too underachieving and she’s on the up and up so of course, it’s curtains for young Bretter. He takes it harder than normal, but it’s done in such a way that anyone who has had a really heard break up totally gets how he feels. Especially if you’re a guy.
He takes a vacation to Hawaii and by chance, she’s there with her new boyfriend, Euro pop star Aldous Snow, played brilliantly by Russell Brand. While Bretter wants to hate Snow with all his guts, Snow is so cool and almost without worry, so much that Bretter can’t hate him. He is hurt and disgusted by Marshall and her smiling face, until he meets and gets to know Rachel (Mila Kunis), who is an employee of the hotel in which he’s staying in. She’s everything that Marshall isn’t, and Bretter doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.
What I enjoyed most about this movie, and enjoy about this style of movie in general, is the focus on building likable characters who you have sympathy for, and smart dialogue which you can relate to. Segal’s Bretter is a little bit of an over the top lovable loser, but Bell’s Marshall is spot on. Kristen Bell has broken up with guys before. She has her act down pat. Kunis’ Rachel is also exactly the kind of girl that you’d wish to run to. She’s the guy’s girl, the low maintenance let’s just have fun and go with the wind kind of girl.
Paul Rudd doesn’t exactly have the laid back surfer down pat, but his delivery is hilarious. He played my favorite character in Knocked Up and if his part were a little bigger, he might’ve stolen the show again. His character kept screwing up old cliches, and I was literally cracking up in my seat.
What I found most interesting about the movie was that throughout all of the faults of all of the characters, I found something to like about each of them. While not condoning the way she broke up with Peter (and cheated on him), you could even relate to Sarah Marshall. Her reasons for leaving the relationship were legitimate and if you were related to her, you would’ve probably told her to do a few years before she actually did it.
You have to give kudos to Segel for creating a romantic comedy that works just as well for guys as it does for the ladies. There are definitely some parts that weren’t necessary, like the triple pillypacker shot that I described in the first paragraph, but were definitely tried for laughs. Directed by Nicholas Stoller, the movie also features good usage of flashbacks that further help with the story telling and they don’t break up the flow of the movie at all.
If you need a few laughs, you’ll get them guaranteed.
Tags: Forgetting Sarah Marshall > Jason Segel > Judd Apatow > Kristen Bell > Mila Kunis > Paul Rudd > Russell Brand
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May 1st, 2008 @ 9:07 am
Man, Mila Kunis is hot, but every time I hear her speak and Meg from “Family Guy”‘s voice comes out, it kinda ruins things. I keep thinking about the one scene in “Family Guy” when Meg is holding a package of hot dogs and saying something like “tonight, you’re going to be the New York Knicks”.
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May 1st, 2008 @ 11:28 am
See, I never watch the Family Guy or the other show she was on so I really hadn’t seen her before. I recognized her, but couldn’t place her.
May 1st, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
don’t forget veronica mars!