Forgetting Sarah Marshall came out in 2008, the year I was finally legally allowed to watch R-rated movies by myself. The Nicholas Stoller-directed, Jason Segel-penned, Judd Apatow-produced comedy, along with Bryan Bertino’s horror film The Strangers, were the first R-rated movies I watched in theaters sans parents. Quite the pairing for my initiation into adult film-viewing: one, a terrifying and bleak murder movie, the other, a movie that starts with Jason Segel hanging out with his flaccid, dumped penis for all to see. It’s a nude scene that apparently made Segel’s mom cry, prompting her to send a warning email to family members: “I would like to inform you all that Jason has chosen to do full-frontal nudity. However, it is not gratuitous and is essential to the plot.”
Though “essential” might be a stretch, the scene is refreshing, especially following a slew of comedies that gaze too intently at the naked female body. Even though the film is now a decade old (it hit theaters on April 18, 2008), Segel’s dick still feels like a change of pace from standard bro comedy fare. Segel, from the very beginning of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, shifts the status quo, letting his own body become the target of the audience’s gaze. Kristen Bell, on the other hand, remains clothed throughout this opening scene.
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I hesitate to call Sarah Marshall a feminist film, as it still makes a Manic Pixie Dream Girl out of Mila Kunis’ Rachel while antagonizing the titular Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), but the film, which was a very personal project for Segel (inspired by his own naked break-up), still manages to subvert a lot of tropes, namely that of the “crazy ex-girlfriend.”
Instead of Sarah, it’s Peter Bretter (Segel) who is turned into the desperate and vulnerable one in their relationship, the one who takes on the clingy personality usually assigned to the female counterparts of heterosexual couples. There’s even a scene where, after Peter accidentally ends up at the same Hawaiian resort as Sarah and her new boo (the eccentric English Rocker Aldous Snow played by Russell Brand), he snoops around and follows the lovebirds as he relays information to his brother Brian (Bill Hader), then very awkwardly interrupts the couple’s romantic moment on their balcony.
Peter may not have planned his trip to coincide with Sarah’s intentionally, but he did choose the destination based on her recommendation, and he does adopt sensitive, emotional qualities whereas Sarah moves on easily.
In fact, Sarah is given the liberty to pursue her desires in the way men usually do. She’s also the more successful one in the relationship—a popular star of a crime show (a meta reference since she was on Veronica Mars right before the film’s release) while Peter is her non-famous collaborator, a composer whose day job scoring his girlfriend’s show is quite far from his true artistic aspirations. And yes, being outraged by the antagonization of Sarah Marshall is an easy gut response—and to a degree, pretty fair (remember the “You Suck Sarah Marshall” ads before the movie came out?). The flames are further fanned when we later realize that Sarah had cheated on Peter when they were still together.
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But the film goes beyond the surface, past that gut response, and absolves itself from painting Sarah as the evil heartbreaker we initially perceived. Later, when Sarah and Peter talk through their break-up—the film’s most earnest moment—Sarah finally voices her side of the story: turns out Peter wasn’t such a great boyfriend. “It got really hard to keep taking care of you when you stopped taking care of yourself,” she tells him. She says she tried to get him out of the house, and out of his sweatpants. She took love seminars, sex seminars, talked to everyone, and tried everything. “I couldn’t drown with you anymore. Don’t you dare sit there and tell me I didn’t try. I did. You were too stupid to notice.” Balancing the animosity that had only been aimed at Sarah, the scene reveals that they were both deeply flawed in their relationship, and its ending was inevitable after hearing both sides.
Ten years later, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is still a fun, hilarious watch that mined the comedic genius of not just its main cast but its supporting cast as well (notably Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd), and is still considered an important addition to the break-up movie canon. Even when the film slightly fails one of its female characters (Kunis’ Rachel, the “hot new girl” who helps Peter break out of his shell), it still attempts to rectify some of the genre’s past missteps, starting with the full-frontal break-up scene that remains one of the film’s most memorable parts.