Last night I finally sat down and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the “unrated” version. This post was going to be about how much bloat there was in the “unedited” version, and how if only I’d seen it in the theater I would have been spared 30 minutes of mildy saucy material and enjoyed a much more tightly edited film.
But no! IMDB informs me that the unrated version only has 6 extra minutes, and the theater version really does clock in at almost two hours. Jesus, Hollywood! It’s a romantic comedy, don’t drag it out like a UNESCO hearing on potato blight. 90 minutes is a perfect length for most silly movies, unless… well, I dunno. Any examples of brilliant long comedies out there, commenters?
So, while I sat there endlessly groaning at the extended nonsense from Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd, assuming that they’d been wedged in to pad out the DVD, I was all wrong. The editors actually put all that junk in there on purpose! Huhhhhh.
Mila Kunis
Meanwhile, add this to the long list of movies where gorgeous women fall unaccountably for lumpen, dullsville dudes. Unlike in Knocked Up, where what’s-her-name was semi-plausibly attracted to fatso Seth Rogen for his sense of humor, it’s never clear why Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell, who you’ll maybe recognize from “Deadwood”) or the thoroughly adorable Mila Kunis would get melty for Peter, our whiny blandmobile of a hero. The answer seems to be that he’s occasionally a decent guy, and that just makes their li’l ol’ hearts go weepy woo-woo!
Bleah. So color me largely unamused by Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Maybe there’s a fun 88-minute comedy in there somewhere, but I’m in no mood to sort it out. This movie has sat by my DVD since October 12th of last year; it’s high time it went back to Netflix to afflict some other sap.
long comedies? Does Dr. Strangelove count? Or Platoon?