If William Kerr had been more of a hard core puritan, Forgetting Sarah Marshall would have been a pretty good movie. Unfortunately, it would also have been about twenty-five minutes long.
It’s interesting to note that the dirty jokes, of course, kill in the theatre. (Specifically the one theatre I saw it in.) One full frontal male nudity gains exactly one belly roar from the audience, similar to the way stand up comics (sometimes) score cheap laughs by saying fuck.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m always up for a good old raunchy comedy. But when about ninety percent of the sex jokes are bad ones, and it’s more like the other way around when the carachters are allowed to actually interact instead of being props for embarrasing sight gags and lude innendo of varying originality, I can’t help but think that here is a team who have sold out to the loss of the cineasticly inclined.
Lovers of The Seventies Show and/or Veronica Mars are in for a treat, and Jonah Hill does a lot better than in the much overrated hit Superbad. If you stay the whole way through, to spot the Arrested Development -star cameo, the last forty-five minutes will probably leave you feeling justified in not leaving an hour earlier. Somewhat.
And most of it is set in Hawaii. That’s gonna count for something.
