So for a long time -- a few years, actually -- I made a point of going to as few movies as possible because I felt them to be a bad deal. Why pay ten dollars to see a movie once when you can buy the DVD previously-viewed for eight or five? Well, I have a girlfriend now who likes to go out to the movies, so I'm going. And I'm not paying ten dollars, I'm paying twenty. So much for rational single-hood.

In any event, the last two movies we went to were both worthy of being written about, only I wasn't sure what I was doing with this blog when I saw them. Now I know: whatever I want, more or less. So:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall I'll slap down money to see pretty much anything with Judd Apatow's name on it. The last four movies I saw out in the theater before Sarah Marshall were Walk Hard, Superbad, Superbad, and Superbad. (I really liked Superbad.) These movies are only ever complete when the special-edition DVD is released and all the extended riffs, deleted scenes, and bloopers are viewable, so it's hard to say where Sarah Marshall ranks among the rapidly expanding Apatowniverse pantheon. It's certainly an astute vehicle for the chief talent of Jason Segel, which is playing desperate, pathologically sensitive, slightly creepy guys who can't stand to be alone. It's there in series-appropriate degrees in his roles on "Freaks and Geeks" and "How I Met Your Mother" and exhibited to most full display in his memorable recurring role as archetypal loser boyfriend Eric on "Undeclared."

Sarah Marshall is Segel's script and mines his basic device for about all it's worth; if Segel plans to be a leading man again he needs to show a different side of himself. Thankfully his character Peter's overemoting is only occasionally overbearing. Segel isn't afraid to make himself ridiculous, which makes him and his character more sympathetic. Kristin Bell is more dignified as the titular Sarah, which might be why she gets so few laughs -- Bell might have been uptight improvising right after the heavily-scripted "Veronica Mars," or maybe it's the one-dimensional shrewishness of the character. Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd get their requisite number of laughs as a waiter and surf instructor, respectively, at the resort where Peter goes to forget Sarah and finds she and her new rocker boyfriend.

The setting, in addition to ripping off a "Frasier" episode, makes for a certain repetition in the sets that makes you notice by negative example how good the filmmakers generally are at changing the scenery around. In Sarah Marshall, it's beach-lobby-room-restaurant-room and repeat, and it becomes a little claustrophobic. It makes you wish there were more of Russell Brand's Aldous Snow, the guru-like rocker who woos Sarah and has virtually every one of the film's best lines. At the very least he could be in the background humping a palm tree like he does in the music video that introduces his character. Mila Kunis is pleasant as Peter's rebound love interest, but their scenes together are so perfunctory and obvious that she seems wasted like Bell. One thing that Apatow and his underlings need to work on is giving females equal time in their films. Expanded roles for recurring bit players like Kristen Wiig and Jane Lynch would be nice.

It's likely I'll buy the DVD, which might improve my overall impression of the movie. The longer version of Walk Hard, on that DVD, added a lot of funny stuff and made a number of things that didn't quite make sense in the theatrical cut pay off. Sarah Marshall doesn't have the epic structure of that movie, so I don't expect its home release to be as revelatory.