Forgetting Sarah Marshall

There have been a bit too many sharply intelligent and witty comedies lately, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to reduce the amount of gritty reality and give the audience a bit of emotions, as not everyone enjoys seeing a naked Jason Segel, who looks like he has been eating sausages washed down with powerful gulps of beer for the past few years. Mila Kunis saves a lot, her genuine character is flawless. The rest is not worth mentioning. “Reality” without any distinctive trademarks. Boring. (10/07/2008)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a film that doesn’t need its first kiss boosted by anything more than a two-second quiet romantic tone to make it into the most romantic moment in the film. Forgetting Sarah Marshall has so much sincerity and tangible reality in it, such multidimensional and believable characters, and offers such versatile, fair, non-clichéd comic and dramatic situational clashes of characters that it’s a match for any highly acclaimed psychological drama in terms of having a unique creative touch and quality storytelling. I saw this in a multiplex right after the shallow, superficial, tacky, cheap and unoriginal Sex and the City – and it didn’t just improve my mood for a moment, it improved my whole weekend. Judd Apatow is no less intelligent than Steven Spielberg, and thanks to him, after twenty years of watching movies, I fell in love with a genre that I have always considered only mindless fun. And what about the missing fifth star? You don’t fall in love with a girl because she’s perfect... (06/21/2008)

Another enjoyable comedy from Judd Apatow, plus my favorite actors from TV series: HIMYM's Marshall (Jason Segel), VM's Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell). I was captivated by the character of Aldous Snow – Sarah's new boyfriend and extravagant singer, played brilliantly by Russell Brand. (08/03/2009)

Ugh. I originally wanted to stick with a one-star rating, not comment and avoid insulting the screenwriters, director, actors... All of them. But I just couldn't do it. I can say with a clear conscience that I haven't seen a more boring film with worse (non)humor in a long time. I must admit that it was simply impossible to watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall in one sitting. On almost every occasion, I would pick up my cell phone, go to the fridge, see if I'd gotten an email, and who knows what else... None of that helped. The main "hero" is an unsympathetic jerk. His ex-girlfriend is not even worth writing about. His ex-girlfriend's boyfriend is a complete idiot, whom I would torture in a way so cruel that people have been afraid to invent it yet. In terms of the other characters, one is more useless than the next. An hour and forty minutes of unfunny misery, boredom and an attempt at unconventional humor that should hopefully have resulted in some kind of lesson. Brr. As most of you can probably guess, I give one single star for Mila Kunis. But that's all. (03/02/2011)

Nothing special, really, but on the other hand it was terribly cute and naive and had nice performances, so all the missteps and clichés were masked quite successfully in the end. Jason Segel fits his role perfectly, as does Mila Kunis, whose beauty surpasses even the entire Hawaiian scenery and manages to make an already easygoing film a bit more enjoyable for me. What puzzles me, though, is the much-vaunted cult of Judd Apatow. With all due respect, as beautiful as Forgetting Sarah Marshall is, I really struggle to find a single plot or emotional impulse that lifts it out of genre routine and touches the romantic in me with the same love and sincerity as some of the films by Rob Reiner, Jason Reitman or Lasse Hallstrom. (10/18/2012)