Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a fairly chill rom com about a man-child whose hot girlfriend dumps him for another man. He goes to Hawaii to forget her but (wuh oh!) she's having a romantic vacation with her new boyfriend at the same resort. For absolutely no reason apart from maybe pity, an attractive front-desk girl lets him stay in the most expensive suite for free and he jumps at this opportunity. Now, the movie gets better later on but it's starting out in a really deep hole. Why is the front-desk girl nice to him? How is she allowed to let people squat in vacant rooms? Does she own the place? And why god why does he agree to this stupid arrangement? Maybe it's supposed to be well-known that there are absolutely no free rooms at any hotel in Hawaii at any time? A mystery.

Anyway, I assumed that the film would reveal his ex-girlfriend to be evil in some way although, we would know, mostly she's evil for not valuing this guy who is just sooo nice and sooo low-maintenance. This is sort of what happens but, to the film's credit, they give her a pretty good monologue about how he's given up on himself, how he's not amounting to anything and it shouldn't be her job to fix him.... and then they reveal she's evil (they actually compare her to Hitler (of course.))

I feel like the film is trying to have it both ways. It wants to be a story of actual personal growth and also a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the couch-bound loser. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it's trying to get show a way forward for the couch-bound. If that way forward is a crisis caused by an ex however, it might be kind of specific advice (if that's what we're going for here.)

It's not a mean film though. It's very chill and relaxed and the people in it generally like each other. It's almost a stoner film. I don't want to condemn this movie. It's sort of dumb but it's not cruel and it might help someone make sense of their life. It's sort of like the puppet vampire musical the protagonist keeps talking about. Clearly it makes sense to someone but not me. (They show a bit of the puppet musical at the end. It looks like an amusing mess. I'd rather have seen that, but then I'm a sucker for misguided whimsy.)