Let’s not go overboard now. One of the best comedies of the decade? One of the best damn comedies ever made? I think Richard Roeper could be diagnosed clinically insane now that Roger Ebert is no longer on his show, but that’s another story entirely. For a movie that had a lot of buzz going for it and almost unanimous positive reviews from critics, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is underwhelming and, dare I say, forgettable. It’s not a bad movie by any means, but it’s fairly boring for the first hour and only gets marginally better in the second. The casting is uninspired, the cameos are endless, and the jokes are very few and far between. An instant classic comedy this does not make.

Peter (Jason Segel) leads a fairly laidback lifestyle, composing music (really more like background ambience, as he says) for TV shows, namely one in particular that stars his girlfriend of 5 plus years Sarah Marshall (Veronica Mars’s Kristen Bell). It’s a little hard to believe she’s lasted this long with the guy but to each his own (or her own I guess). Despite forced flasback scenes featuring the two of them having loads of fun, they seem to be rather chemistry-free. Maybe that explains something we learn about the last year of their relationship. And maybe that also explains why Sarah finally leaves Peter to start a new relationship. Completely heart-broken, Peter goes to Hawaii to get away from it all, only to find Sarah and her new guy prancing around the beaches. What will this guy who seemingly has tons of money to throw at an endless Hawaiian vacation do? Possibly find love elsewhere?

Writer/producer/director Judd Apatow has had a banner last twelve months. While his Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story wasn’t all that successful, he had two big hits last summer with the wonderful Knocked Up and the hilarious Superbad, both huge 100+ million dollar gross hits. This summer it looks like he has two more winners on his hands with the possibly funny Stepbrothers and the probably funny The Pineapple Express, maybe the most promising looking comedy of 2008. Even though I was disappointed in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, his newest produced comedy, it’s welcoming that the guy is here and plentiful of projects. It’s like Woody Allen times a hundred. How many can Apatow pump out in a year? Let’s just wait and see!A movie like this, for me, really succeeds or fails based on the charm of the lead character, and Jason Segel’s character (truly his character, as he wrote the movie) just isn’t all that interesting. Compare his character to Steve Carell’s Andy in the 40-Year-Old Virgin and one can see that Andy is a much richer, more textured character than Peter. It also helps that the latter film has a much funnier, more original screenplay. Part of my problem with the beginning of the movie is that we’re never really given the chance to like Sarah, therefore it’s hard to understand why he’s so broken up over her. His near-obsession with Sarah also makes it less believable when just days later he is falling head-over-heels for someone else. A lot has been written about his nude scenes in the movie, in which you get to see literally everrrrything, but they don’t feel authentic at all. At the same time, it’s not all that funny if he’s naked if nothing is really done with it. And nothing is. The same goes for a lot of the rest of the movie.

The supporting characters in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad are all stellar, simply adding to already terrific lead characters. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there isn’t a memorable character in the bunch. Sarah Marshall is a very pretty boring character. Just as boring is the Mila Kunis character Rachel, beautiful but bland. They’re watchable of course, but a really annoying character comes in the form of rock star Aldous, played by Russel Brand. This “other man” character could’ve been more cliched, I guess, as a preppy asshole or something. But he’s a maniacally stupid character that isn’t ever funny and, even worse, never really a threat to Peter. Maybe the most annoying aspect to this movie, however, is the plethora of cameos that just keep coming and coming, very few with a laugh, very few with a purpose. Paul Rudd’s in this movie. Why? I have no idea. Jonah Hill is funny in Superbad, but this movie seems to think we’ll just laugh at him if he walks in and out of a scene and says hello. The only cameo that gets a laugh is Billy Baldwin, hilarious in a couple scenes in Sarah Marshall’s awful TV show.

I didn’t hate this movie, and there are some funny scenes in the latter half. My favorite subplot concerns Peter’s desires to make Dracula: The Musical, and the way this storyline is paid off is pure gold. It offers a classic final scene that is better than anything in the movie. Scenes revolving around Sarah Marshall’s career are humorous, including an inside look at her TV show (co-starring Billy Baldwin, of all people), and a dinner scene with the main quartet discussing the horror movie she shot in Australia. The movie definitely has a likeability factor, one that takes center stage in the second half when a potential relationship starts to get deeper and more meaningful, and some more serious scenes later on ring true.

But there’s just not enough here to get excited about. I guess Forgetting Sarah Marshall may be better than many other choices, especially in this dull month of April when Prom Night and 88 Minutes are the other options out there. I might have even been less hard on the movie if my expectations hadn’t been so damn high. At the height of it all, I just didn’t find Peter all that interesting of a protagonist, and I don’t believe Jason Segel can carry a film. He can be funny on his own, but to carry a movie scene after scene just isn’t for him. I also hope that the cameos in future Apatow productions be reigned to a minimal, because there are a lot of actors out there who probably would’ve been more appropriate in the roles that Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill played in this movie. Remember, these two guys aren’t just funny in and of themselves. Forgetting Sarah Marshall at this point is just a way to pass the time before we get to the big daddy comedy of the summer The Pineapple Express, the trailer of which I saw for the first time before this movie. What can I say? I can’t wait.