You Do Look Fat In Those Jeans, Sarah Marshall

Today, briefly, I could visit a frat house and fit in.

*****

About mid-March I was standing at the southeast corner of 4th and Townsend, waiting for the light to change so that I could make my way to Brannan, and a cab curbed right in front of me with some sort of graffiti on the lighted triangle on the roof of the car. I had to laugh--only in San Francisco would someone find a cab still enough for a long enough time to paint something on it, and only in San Francisco would they leave a message about how they hated a girl. Probably a Giants' fan, I thought.

A couple days later I saw another cab like that, with a DIFFERENT message but about the same girl, and this time I thought, "Someone has more money than they have sense to hire out space on cabs to profess how much they hate their ex." Then I saw it on a billboard, with a website in the bottom right-hand corner. Turns out, when you go to the website, IT'S A MOVIE. One that not many people will forget after that ad campaign.

I wasn't even considering "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" at first--a certain kind of guy watches movies like that, I thought--the same kind of guy who INSISTS that you need to see "Caddyshack" or Ben Stiller movies. But I did enjoy "40-Year-Old Virgin," and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" started to grow in my mind. I had enjoyed "Virgin" so much because I had just lost my virginity at an unusual age myself when that movie came out, and when I gave up the ghost and saw "Sarah Marshall" today because I thought it might remind me of breakups I had endured. I was right.

It's a good movie, and I can say for starters mostly because the entire time I expected someone to puke and NO ONE DID. Thank God that movie gimmick wore off for this film. There are a LOT of phallic references--if cock jokes offend you, stay home. Full frontal nudity on a guy happens several times--and NEVER ON A WOMAN IN THE FILM. (How about that, ladies?) There are a lot of boob shots as well, but no face-on shot below the waist on the women. What I found most strange about this film was how little laughter there was from the audience, and yet how much they clapped at the end. You get the idea, to paraphrase one of the critics, that this is a man's version of the chick flick.

This movie does not need to be seen on the big screen, BTW...I only went because I needed a laugh.