Forgetting Sarah Marshall

ON THE AISLE
Peter Weyl

It’s only been a week or two, and already I’m forgetting “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

This is the latest ribald comedy from the Judd Apatow fun factory, only this time Apatow is the producer and a newcomer names Nicholas Stoller directs. You might call the movie Apatowesque, because while it contains the requisite bawdy jokes, the characters just don’t come close to the loveable losers Apatow gave us in such earlier works as “Knocked Up’ and “Superbad.” In both those movies, the main characters were unabashed horndogs, forced to do some quick growing-up. What made us enjoy their stumbling progress was the element of sweet sincerity behind the randy, rowdy dialogue.

We’ve got another sweety here in the character of Peter, played by Jason Segal, who also wrote the screenplay. But this guy is just too much of a loser for us to care what happens to him. As the title suggests, he spends most of the movie trying to forget his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Kristen Bell, from “Heroes” and “Veronica Mars”). Trouble is, he goes to Hawaii to forget, and checks into the very hotel where Sarah is shacked up with her new boyfriend, a British rock star named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Fortunately for our moping hero, there’s a perky hotel employee on hand to cheer him up (Mila Kunis, from “That 70’s Show”).

So we have a romantic quadrangle, set against a posh hotel and some pretty Hawaiian scenery. What’s not to like? Well, for one thing, few of the charactersare very likeable. Peter is basically a weepy shlub. Sarah Marshall comes off as a self-centered airhead. And even the attractive new girl in Peter’s life doesn’t bring much personality to the table, and her backstory as a surf-bunny whose half-naked photo still adorns a men’s room wall, seems awfully contrived. (FYI: IMDB says the photo is a fake.)

The only bright notes in this lackadaisical farce are two enormous Hawaiian hotel employees (Taylor Willy and Kalami Robb) who take poor Peter under their wing, and that Brit rocker, Aldous Snow. Hilariously underplayed by Russell Brand, he comes across as a smarter member of Spinal Tap, off the booze and drugs but seriously into shagging. This being an Apatowesque movie, we are sure to encounter some of his regulars, and there they are: Bill Hader, Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd all show up in minor roles, basically doing the same thing they do in all of Apatow’s movies. (Jason Segal was one of those second bananas himself, in “Knocked Up.”)

The most talked about scenes in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” involve Segal’s full-frontal nudity. We are treated to that exposure twice, while the women in the movie remain mostly clothed, even during some of their friskier moments. The bottom line: despite its sexually-charged tone, this movie is flaccid.

It’s rated R, for the reasons stated above.

Smart People

We're back at the movies this week with "Smart People," a likeable little comedy set in the concrete groves of academe (Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh).

Poor old Professor Wetherhold. He's a widower who still keeps his late wife's clothes in the closet. He suffered a seizure, which means he can't drive for several months. His brilliant high school daughter is turning into a depressed mini-version of him. No one wants to publish his latest book. And his ne'er-do-well brother has suddenly dropped in to stay for a while.

You'd feel sorry for the guy if only he weren't such a jerk. You know that the first time you see him parking his car across two spaces. In fact, he does it twice. As played by Dennis Quaid, he's a pompous, pot-bellied intellectual snob, who can't hear a student's opinion without belittling it and the student.


Clearly, he's due for some humanizing, and who better to administer it than his adoptive brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church, from "Sideways"), and the attractive Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker), who never forgave ol' Wetherhold for giving her a C back in her freshman year. (For reasons known only to her, she still hangs on to that English paper she wrote for him.)


The fourth person in this character-driven tale is Wetherhold's daughter Vanessa, played by the appealing Ellen Page as a conservative Juno, still ready with a smart-ass quip, only with a Reagan poster on the wall. Unlike Juno, however, Vanessa doesn't have any friends -- that is, until Uncle Chuck arrives on the scene with some reefer and a pitcher of beer. He's not out to corrupt her, just loosen her up a little.

Complications, as they say, ensue.


I won't give away much more of the plot here -- you've probably figured out that the comely Dr. Hartigan will find something to salvage in the wreckage of Wetherhold. You may wonder why she bothers, but you'll still find some things to laugh at along the way.


"Smart People" was directed by a newcomer named Noam Murro, whose prior work seems to consist of TV commercials. It's not a laugh riot, but with summer movies on the way in, it offers a human-scale story with some clever lines. You could do a lot worse.

First Reel

Welcome to this NEWS CENTER movie blog.

Along with being a news producer, I'm a longtime moviegoer, averaging about 50 big-screen flicks a year, with at least twice that number of DVDs. Back in the '90's, I even got paid to write about movies for the late, lamented Casco Bay Weekly.

I've been in love with movies ever since I first started seeing 'em in a theater that featured a retractable roof. During summer showings, they'd roll it back and we kids watched Burt Lancaster in "The Crimson Pirate" or "Ten Tall Men" (anyone remember that foreign legion flick?) under the stars. These days, I prefer matinees; not only are they cheaper, but coming out of a movie into daylight seems to heighten the dreamlike state of the experience.

I recently caught two current movies that both hearken back to the 1970's in differing ways.

The Bank Job is a crackerjack retelling of a (mostly) real-life bank robbery that stunned the Brits back in 1971. What made it such a mystery was that four days after the crooks got away with millions of pounds, the media went completely silent about the robbery, the likely result of an MI-5 (British intelligence) "D-Notice," ordering the press to put a sock in it.

In this smart, fast-moving caper movie, action man Jason Statham ("The Transporter") heads up a band of small-time crooks who get recruited to pull off the bank job. There's a femme fatale (Saffron Burrows), the Porn King of London, assorted crooked cops, a British Black Panther, his pal John Lennon, and of course MI-5, to name but a few of the interested parties.

I loved the energy of this movie, kicking right in with T Rex's "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" on the soundtrack, to set both the time frame and the backstory, involving some kinky royal carrying-on. Things get pretty nasty down the road, as the light-hearted caper turns violent, but all the loose ends get tied up neatly, as befits the genre. It was directed by a New Zealander named Roger Donaldson, who gave us such earlier gems as "Smash Palace" and "The World's Fastest Indian." He also directed "Cocktail" with Tom Cruise, but the less said about that, the better. It's rated R for sex and violence.

My second pick is Shine A Light, Martin Scorsese's digital tribute to The Rolling Stones.

Scorsese's made two great music movies before this one: "The Last Waltz" (1978), showing the farewell concert of The Band, and "No Direction Home" (2005) a biography of Bob Dylan. This time, he heads up a multi-multi-multi camera shoot of the Stones performing two shows at New York City's venerable Beacon Theater.

There are some wonderful moments in this big, shiny production, but for me, most of them are the smaller ones. I particularly liked the moment when Keith Richards bends down and gives his guitar pick to a front-row fan, then a short time later hands the guitar itself over to visiting blues legend Buddy Guy.

Come to think of it, I liked just about everything about Keith, in stark contrast to that other Glimmer Twin, Mick Jagger. Jagger, 63, still insists on doing his rooster on Viagra performance throughout the concert. His stamina is superhuman, but his mugging and prancing get tiresome, particularly since Scorsese seems riveted by it. Meanwhile, Keith seems to hang back, amused by it all, while drummer Charlie Watts keeps the beat going like an atomic clock. Guitarist Ronnie Wood is back there somewhere, and fill-in bass player Daryl Jones barely gets noticed by all those cameras. The band's horn section (including the great Bobby Keys) and backup singers also get short shrift from the star-struck Scorsese crew.

Speaking of stars, there are a few cameo appearances in "Shine A Light," including Bill and Hillary Clinton (I think that was her, she passes by the camera so quickly), not to mention Jack White of the White Stripes and Christina Aguilera. The look of the movie is fantastic, with huge depth of field. Unforuntately, Scorsese sticks pretty much exclusively to close-ups, making you wish for more wide shots to suggest the actual concert experience. Of course, the digital sound mix is superb. Every now and then, the camera moves through the crowd and you actually hear isolated pockets of clapping amid all the music.

Ah, the music. The Stones have been making it for over forty years now, and it still sounds great - blues, rock and country, threatening to careen into chaos as two lead guitars compete, but always staying on track, thanks to their stolid drummer. I wish the band had focused more on their lesser-known tunes ( haven't you heard "Satisfaction" and "Brown Sugar" enough times by now?), so when Keith launched into a sincere, solo version of "You've Got The Silver," I loved it. Adding to the fun are some clips from early Rolling Stones interviews. (There is no mention, however, of Altamont, where they presided over a day of violence culminating in murder. I know, because I was there.)

Rolling Stones tunes have always played a big part in Scorsese's movies: remember "Jumpin' Jack Flash" in the opening scene of "Mean Streets"? Now the band has its very own Scorsese movie, and for all its flaws, it's a gas, gas, gas. This one's rated PG 13 for language. Oh yeah, and smoking.