I've seen two comedies recently that were both set in Hawaii. The first was the 2004 Adam Sandler film 50 First Dates. I was looking to waste some time and accomplished that. The acting: poor. The humor: induced eye-rolls instead of laughter. Rob Schneider is a good sign that a movie will be awful.
The second is the soon to be released Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I saw Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad (all produced by Judd Apatow). Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed with any of them. They all had their scenes certainly (and Anchorman had Will Ferrell), but only Knocked Up had any character development and that was at best anemic. Now, you might say that character development, or plot development for that matter, is not what they are going for in these films. I understand that the comedic elements may be the driving force, but I'd suggest that the best comedies have comedic elements equally matched to the story in which they are placed.
I actually enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel deserves credit for writing the script and acting the male lead. He plays Peter Bretter, a recently-dumped man who goes to Hawaii to get away only to find his TV star ex (Sarah Marshall, played by Kristen Bell) at the same resort. Sarah is there with her new boyfriend and plenty of awkwardness ensues. Peter falls for a member of the resort staff, Rachel Jansen (played by Mila Kunis, probably most well known for her role as Jackie on That '70's Show). Segel provides more subtle acting than we are perhaps used to in such a comedy and does well playing the depressed, heart-broken lead. Kunis is equally effective. In short, while neither performance demands a lot, neither disrupts or gets in the way of the standard but surprisingly fruitful storyline. The humor of the film is sexually based and not for the young or easily offended, but I watched the film with a theater full of college students and joined them in laughing throughout. I'm not normally a huge fan of this sort of film (and by 'this sort,' I mean movies that rely on ploys like frontal male nudity for shock humor), but this is probably the one I enjoyed the most since There's Something About Mary (and that was a decade ago). Perhaps the audience I watched it with helped, but I found it a lot of fun: not as over-the-top as Superbad but far funnier than Knocked Up.
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