Last Sunday (April 20th) after a long, delicious and increasingly alcoholic afternoon tea at Ivan and Robyn's, I met up with Madeleine at the Scotiabank Centre, where we saw the 7.10 pm show of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Sometime recently, in an article I think I read somewhere or other, someone may or may not have said (I’m all about the details) that Judd Apatow had created a new comedy genre. Certainly his films (and the films he has had a hand in producing, like this one written and starring by his mate Jason Segel) share a set of characteristics: written-on-the-back-of-a-Rizla plots; heavily improvised dialogue; Paul Rudd; and geeky male leads who inexplicably (despite being unemployed, emotionally retarded and fat) manage to persuade the hot female leads to sleep with them. He also has a fondness for showing his characters’ nether regions. (If you thought you’d seen rather too much of Katherine Heigl‘s vagina in Knocked Up, be wary: by the closing credits the back of your own hand will seem strange and unfamiliar compared to Segel’s penis.)
With their all-over-the-place narratives (the plot arcs are more like plot amoebas) and improv’d performances, it’s tempting to call Apatow’s films situationLESS comedies. But that’s not quite right either: these aren’t Seinfeldian stories about nothing. In many ways, they’re classic Hollywood boy-meets-girl. Let’s just say, then, that in Apatow’s films situation takes a backseat to character. In a way, he’s the new Woody Allen. He creates his characters in some detail, before releasing them into some vaguely-sketched scenario and standing back to film the results. Okay yes, I know I’m being unfair to Woody: his films address “big issues” (said in a voice like James Earl Jones imitating the singer from Crash Test Dummies in an echo chamber). Apatow’s are pure candy-floss and vanish from the mind as soon as you leave the cinema (except the shots of Segel’s manhood, which I can unfortunately still see now). They’re dumb. They wear their crassness like a corsage of inflated luminous condoms. They sacrifice linearity for random one-off non-sequitur jokes. They rely far too much on large portions of the cast getting drunk / stoned / an amusing medical condition. (And really, does Paul Rudd have photos of Apatow sodomising lemurs that he ALWAYS manages to get cast in these things?)
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I liked this film. Best not to think too much then. Maybe this whole review could have been summed up like this: I laughed. And really, when so few other comedies achieve even that, perhaps that's enough.
Sometime recently, in an article I think I read somewhere or other, someone may or may not have said (I’m all about the details) that Judd Apatow had created a new comedy genre. Certainly his films (and the films he has had a hand in producing, like this one written and starring by his mate Jason Segel) share a set of characteristics: written-on-the-back-of-a-Rizla plots; heavily improvised dialogue; Paul Rudd; and geeky male leads who inexplicably (despite being unemployed, emotionally retarded and fat) manage to persuade the hot female leads to sleep with them. He also has a fondness for showing his characters’ nether regions. (If you thought you’d seen rather too much of Katherine Heigl‘s vagina in Knocked Up, be wary: by the closing credits the back of your own hand will seem strange and unfamiliar compared to Segel’s penis.)
With their all-over-the-place narratives (the plot arcs are more like plot amoebas) and improv’d performances, it’s tempting to call Apatow’s films situationLESS comedies. But that’s not quite right either: these aren’t Seinfeldian stories about nothing. In many ways, they’re classic Hollywood boy-meets-girl. Let’s just say, then, that in Apatow’s films situation takes a backseat to character. In a way, he’s the new Woody Allen. He creates his characters in some detail, before releasing them into some vaguely-sketched scenario and standing back to film the results. Okay yes, I know I’m being unfair to Woody: his films address “big issues” (said in a voice like James Earl Jones imitating the singer from Crash Test Dummies in an echo chamber). Apatow’s are pure candy-floss and vanish from the mind as soon as you leave the cinema (except the shots of Segel’s manhood, which I can unfortunately still see now). They’re dumb. They wear their crassness like a corsage of inflated luminous condoms. They sacrifice linearity for random one-off non-sequitur jokes. They rely far too much on large portions of the cast getting drunk / stoned / an amusing medical condition. (And really, does Paul Rudd have photos of Apatow sodomising lemurs that he ALWAYS manages to get cast in these things?)
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I liked this film. Best not to think too much then. Maybe this whole review could have been summed up like this: I laughed. And really, when so few other comedies achieve even that, perhaps that's enough.
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