I Will Put Playgrounds Next To Sewage Systems

On my last night in Budapest I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the friend I was visiting and a couple of her friends from work.  Notwithstanding the weirdness of spending my time in a foreign country seeing an American movie, I enjoyed it.  I hadn’t seen any of Judd Apatow’s previous films, most of which took on subject matter a little too familiar for comfort, but I thought this was an interesting take on the romantic comedy genre, and while it did hew to some of the conventions of that genre I thought it undermined others in unexpected ways.  The main character is oddly unsympathetic, especially at first, and it’s quite an achievement on the part of the filmmakers to make him at least somewhat sympathetic by the end.

I’ve heard that a common criticism of Apatow’s previous films is the lack of depth to the female characters, and while this one is definitely primarily from a male point of view, I think all the characters are presented as real people with real emotions and foibles.  Even the new boyfriend, while he is irritating in many ways, isn’t the cardboard villain that many romantic comedies put in this place.  Indeed, almost all the characters are pretty sympathetic, some more than others and some more at some times than others.

I do think it ran a bit long, which is typical of pretty much all movies these days, and while I appreciated the relative lack of obvious plot machinery, it could have been a lot more focused.  Still, this is an interesting movie, quite funny, and worth seeing if you’re into this sort of thing.