Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Judd Apatow has been hailed as the saviour of comedy. It's easy to see why. He seemed to have cracked it. The box office figures would agree. His producing template is simple. Get a talented troupe of comedic actors and directors together, including himself. Generate the material from within that group allowing the talent to try their hand at writing, directing, producing and whatever you're having yourself. Ensure that the material is foul-mouthed and crude to appeal to the guys and has a strong romantic element to appeal to the girls. Ensure it has genuine characters and arcs to make people care (if they're so inclined). Lastly, let the talent loose by allowing them to improvise and come up with stuff that is too random and inspired to ever be dreamed up by a scriptwriter sitting in front of a laptop, thus making it all feel like a party that the audience is let in on.

Unfortunately there have been dark clouds gathering. His saturation of the marketplace after his initial success (possibly the studios fault for giving him the keys to the city and unloading his waste on the public) has lead to diminishing returns at the box office. Drillbit Taylor was a recent notable failure. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a slightly safer bet, sailing closely as it does to Knocked Up. Written by the goofy self-effacing everyman star that we can all root for, playing opposite a highly attractive female lead who is more famous for her TV roles, an enticing blend of improvised Apatow sweet and sour from a selection of his usual troupe. A simple low-concept premise: Man gets dumped, goes on holidays to get away from it all, his ex his there with her new rock star boyfriend and he can't avoid them. It should work. And it does. Though it never quite reaches the heights of Superbad or Knocked Up.

Segal is endearing and funny at times but can't quite match Seth Rogen in these stakes. The movie unfolds predictably but it doesn't matter when there are enough laughs along the way. Russell Brand delivers a lot of these, essentially playing himself and, as in real life, initially seeming like a prat but actually turning out to be likable. Mila Kunis holds her own as the new love interest but her character is pretty thin and falls annoyingly into a new cliched character-category - the quirky girl who 'understands' the lead and whose passion for life helps the protagonist over a recent trauma. See Garden State and the awful Elizabethtown . Some of the supporting cast seem to be on auto pilot or a little miscast. Jonah Hill is still effortlessly funny though.

There's enough in here to make this a DVD that will be brought around by a comforting friend with a tub of ice-cream after a break-up in years to come (again, if you're so inclined) But it still seems a little further down the graph as Apatow's stock slowly falls. Maybe the upcoming Pineapple Express can buck the trend and make the graph U-shaped again.

3/5