Not much to add here, mostly because I’m too exhausted to do so. Just an old review, plucked at near random from my former online home.

I don’t want to get into a writing rut with comedy films featuring former Freaks and Geeks cast members as unlikely romantic leads but I can’t help myself. Just as Seth Rogen’s boorish teddy bear in Knocked Up was happily familiar for anyone who spent time rooting for Ken Miller, so too does Jason Segel’s work in Forgetting Sarah Marshall have echoes of the finest eighteen episode series ever. His character doesn’t especially resemble the much-loved Nick Andopolis but in that old role Segel established that his greatest strength as an actor is a vanity-free fearlessness. He could stand under-attired and forlorn in the hallway outside his lost girlfriend’s bedroom, emote through misguided serenades or dominate a dance floor in ways that stripped him of his dignity and yet left him with an appealingly earnest sort of personal honor. That’s a quality the producers of a How I Met Your Mother have clearly picked up on and that Segel himself knows how to exploit.

Segel is the sole credited writer of Sarah Marshall and he doesn’t spare himself a bit, cooking up a role that has him getting dumped while standing naked (literally, emotionally, any way you can think of) before his celebrity girlfriend and then enduring the misery of encountering her and her new rock star paramour when he flees to Hawaii for vacation. Directed by Undeclared writer Nicholas Stoller, the film has the endearingly unkempt rhythms of the now familiar Apatow brand. While Judd Apatow’s shadow is here, from the disarming sweetness amidst the willful crudities to the presence of stable members Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd (who will clearly never want for work again now that he’s pals with Judd) it does feel very much like Segel’s vision, albeit undoubtedly shaped by his regular boss’s sensibilities. If there were any doubt, the inclusion of so many muppet/puppet elements would clearly close the case.

It is a nice romantic comedy and a brash laugher in equal measure. It is at its best when it’s the former. Russell Brand’s rocker character exemplifies this tonal split personality and nicely illustrates the marked difference in effectiveness. At times his role is overly cartoonish, preening through a phony music video or engaging in ludicrously sexualized calisthenics in a stage performance. When the character is simpler–a mix of pretension, arrogance and yet a certain friendliness–it’s more genuine. The broader the film pushes, the weaker it is (the comedy surrounding a fanboy waiter played by Superbad‘s Jonah Hill is especially strained).

That’s especially unfortunate because the film has some very interesting things to say when it is most grounded. The interplay between the characters is strong and real; Segel has clearly put some thought into how personal relationships bend and break. Kristen Bell has nice moments as the titular tv star and Mila Kunis from That 70’s Show is shockingly good as the hotel employee who helps Segel’s cuckolded hero rebuild his psyche. The film has a satisfying thematic arc with a fair appraisal of how a person gradually emerges from an unhappy spell and an enveloping relationship. The main character is literally stuck because of his relationship, defined only it’s terms. An aspiring musician, he provides the incidental music for his girlfriend’s police procedural television drama. He is her support, her background score. It’s no great spoiler to note that he symbolically rediscovers his own musical voice by the end. For Segel’s character, the process of forgetting Sarah Marshall leads intrinsically to remembering himself.