Don’t forget Judd Apatow

Judd Apatow is a goddamned, bona fide comedy powerhouse. From his underground comedy sensation Freaks and Geeks through last year’s Knocked Up, Superbad, and the underrated biopic spoof Walk Hard, he has created his own comedic aesthetic and a talented roster of go-to actors.

His films, whether he is the producer, writer, director or all three, are pop culture-reference heavy without resorting to the asinine methods of the recent slew of Epic Movie, Date Movie, etc. Instead, Apatow is clever, while his comedic competition is careless. But he also knows comedy can’t form a solid film on its own. Quality filmmaking demands heart and a tight structure, both of which Apatow delivers, while others just put Will Ferrell in a funny costume and set him after some unattainable sporting championship.

There have been other kings of comedy before Apatow. They all fall eventually. The Farrelly brothers lost steam a few years after Dumb and Dumber, and Ben Stiller reached a kind of terminal elasticity soon after Zoolander.

We are in a new year. And with it comes a flood of new Apatow-related releases, including this week’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Which begs the question, is this the year the dam breaks and the streets are filled with Apatow-flavored shit water? Well, probably not.

Peter Bretter, played by Freaks and Geeks alumnus Jason Segel (he also wrote the script for Forgetting Sarah Marshall), is a standard Apatow leading man. He is disheveled. He has a low-intensity and mostly work-from-home job as a musician for a CSI-type television show.

His dream is to write and star in a Dracula puppet musical about undying love. He eats copious amounts of children’s cereal out of a large mixing bowl. And he has a super hot girlfriend. Her name, obviously, is Sarah Marshall, and she is the star of the cop drama Peter soundtracks. At the beginning of the movie she leaves him in what becomes one of the best break-up scenes ever (he is naked, she is not).

Immediately following said breakup, Peter goes into an interminable depression, tackling an impressive string of one-night stands to soothe his sorrow. It doesn’t work. His brother, Bill, played by the always-funny Bill Hader, suggests Peter go on a vacation with the intent of forgetting Sarah (hence the first part of the title). His plan doesn’t work.

Upon arriving in Hawaii, Peter quickly discovers that Sarah is vacationing in the same hotel. And her new douche-bag boyfriend is with her.

And then hi-jinks. Lots of hi-jinks.

The slovenly Jason Segal isn’t a typical leading man. But if you had told me five years ago Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly and Seth Rogen would be stars of blockbuster comedies, I would’ve politely responded with: “Who?” Then you, being prepared as always, would produce headshots of each actor. And in this ridiculous hypothetical I would look at said headshots and think to myself, not wanting to hurt your feelings, that these men do not fit the mold of a successful Hollywood leading man.

And I would be right. But that doesn’t really matter.

Segal doesn’t quite live up to the everyman stars that have come before him. So we are surprised when he nabs another hottie while in Hawaii–the hotel desk clerk played by Mila Kunis from That ’70s Show.

Luckily, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is packed with Apatow mainstays such as Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, so the funny is here. While the movie doesn’t quite live up to the laugh-a-minute style of Superbad, nor is it as affecting as Knocked Up, it comes close on both accounts.

After watching Peter try to get over Sarah Marshall, it is obvious that forgetting Judd Apatow will be a little harder than we once thought.