Rating: R, or Unrated
Released: 2008
Format: DVD
Version: Unrated Collectors Edition
Run Time: 1 Hr 51 min. (unrated is 1 Hr 58 min.)
Purchased: Scarecrow Video Price: $9.99
Plot according to imdb.com: Peter is a composer and a likable sad sack who's devastated when his girlfriend of five years, Sarah Marshall, the star of a cheesy CSI-style crime show, dumps him. He weeps, he rails, he mopes. Finally, his step-brother Brian suggests Hawaii, so Peter heads for a resort on Oahu where, as he's checking in, he sees Sarah and her new beau, Aldous, a polymorphously perverse English rocker. The weeping and moping start again, until Peter is rescued by Rachel, a thoughtful hotel clerk who invites him to a luau and to hang out. Although he constantly runs into Sarah and Aldous, Peter starts to come alive again. Will Sarah realize what she's lost, and what about Rachel?
Plot according to Allen: See that above plot? It's kinda like that but it's a lot easier. Sarah breaks up with Peter. Peter is broken. In an effort to fix it Peter goes to Hawaii. Sarah is in Hawaii. This complicates things because it is physically impossible to get over an ex if they are always there, especially when they are always there with a pompous douche like Aldous Snow. He eventually meets some people and makes friends with the locals, who help him get over losing the love of his life.
While on the surface this movie is about the interactions between Sarah, Peter, Aldous and Rachel but really it is the whole cast that really make this movie work. Paul Rudd is once again brilliant, Jonah Hill plays a wonderful and kind of creepy waiter to perfection. And of course my absolute favorite characters are the newlywed couple played brilliantly by Jack McBrayer and Maria Thayer. Really though there is no bad performance in this movie.
The straightforward story isn't anything you haven't really seen before in movies, but instead of focusing on a relationship that we have developed interest in seeing survive it takes a more interesting approach of the necessary growth that Jason Segel's Peter needs to make after the end of a relationship to become a happy person. It really is refreshing. I also can't stress enough just how much I love Mila Kunis. There is a very short list of things I would not like to see her do.
Also refreshing is the fact that while being an R rated comedy the excessive female nudity has been replaced with male nudity. You just don't see enough flaccid penis played for laughs and awkwardness these days. Don't you worry straight men who are afraid the sight of a penis will make them gay there is plenty of breasts in this movie too.
A brief warning: While it is advertised as being from the people behind the 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, this is NOT a Judd Aptow movie. He's a producer but really that is it. It is Written by Jason Segel and directed by Nicholas Stoller. I could write an entire essay on why this sort of advertising is immoral but I don't have the time and it would be really boring so I will save you the trouble of reading it.
Some jokes do get run into the ground, for example they show at least 38430983 clips from Sarah's show to show just how terrible CSI is that were funny the first time, but by the fifth time you just want them to go away. As a whole though it was a really funny movie that really made me laugh from beginning to end.
Final rating: 3.5 out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment