Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, and Russell Brand.

So reactions about the film before seeing it, I had seen the trailers and heard that it was one of the funniest movies of last year. In fact, I hadn't heard a bad word about it. So I went into the film with quite high expectations, unfortunately I was severely let down.

The plot revolves around a guy called Peter (Jason Segal) who gets dumped by his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kirsten Bell). Then 3 weeks later, he tries to get over the breakup by going in holiday to Hawaii, only to find that she is there with her new boyfriend, Aldous Snow (Russel Brand). He meets a kind receptionist (Mila Kunis) who tries to help him remember his fun side again. The plot continued to amble forward in an aimless fashion to a rather obvious conclusion.

To say this movie wasn't funny would be an insult to other unfunny movies. It took 40mins for me to laugh out loud, which is a very bad sign for a film billing itself. I then I waited another 60 minutes for another laugh that never came.

It's not even as if the acting is bad, as all the characters were very believeable and the chemistry between the characters was very real. The problem was the script just fell at the first hurdle, it was just not funny and at times it was even highly vulgar. What's worse is that there are some really funny talented comedic actors in this doing cameos, e.g. Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill

I found this thoroughly hard to to rate, with the acting being so great. However the fact that it is billed as a comedy is wrong on so many levels. Surely a film that has only one laugh out loud moment cannot be called a comedy. This movie was a waste of 2 hours of my time that I will never get back.

My advice: steer clear of this highly confused, frustrated and vulgar film.

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆