This is yet another rom-com for teenage boys from the Judd Apatow stable (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and essentially a vehicle for the film's writer and leading man Jason Segel. He plays the wastrel Peter, who is dating a gorgeous TV star S
arah Marshall (Kristen Bell). As usual, in all the stoopid-boy-hot-girl pairings that now abound, the impossibility of such a union is never mentioned. We wouldn't want to stick a pin in the balloon of wish fulfilment for all those pubescent boys, would we?
Anyway, Sarah sees the light and dumps her slacker for Aldous Snow, a sexy popster played by sexy Russell Brand. Quite simply, if Brand didn't hop on set at this point, the two stars we have afforded this film would promptly hop off.
Poor Peter – at least, I think we're supposed to sympathise with the good-for-nothing twerp – heads for Hawaii to get over his broken heart, but whaddya know, Sarah and Aldous are at the same resort, all ready to rub his lonely nose in it.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall was considered taboo busting when it came out, though not for its depiction of the sexes. No, this is the film that will be remembered for its full frontal male nudity. Apatow has said America fears the penis, and he intends to show a male member in every film. I would say there is more to fear in Apatow's brand of comedy.
Okay, there are some laughs, but at the heart of it all is a disconcerting, misogynistic message that beautiful women are mean, vindictive and shallow, and we should pity the boring, selfish, disappointing men who get dumped by them.
GONE BABY GONE (15) £17.99Director: Ben Affleck
Running time: 109 minutes
****
Who would have thought that Ben Affleck would make such a sensitive, smart, and assured director? This film – in which he doesn't even appear – may actually have saved his career in Hollywood.
Gone Baby Gone is Affleck's directorial debut and stars his brilliant brother Casey – another revelation – as Patrick, the private eye who takes on the case of a young girl's disappearance in the tough, working-class neighbourhood of Dorchester, South Boston.
Based on a thriller by Dennis Lehane (as was Clint Eastwood's Mystic River), the similarity with the Madeleine McCann case is striking, and was much commented on when this came out.
In the film, the missing girl's aunt and uncle show up at the apartment of Patrick and his lover and colleague Angie (Michelle Monaghan), begging them to take on the case because of their local knowledge. Meanwhile, Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) are getting hot under the collar at all the media scrutiny.
Patrick is led by kindness and arrogance in equal measure and becomes a man very much in over his head. In the end, everything he has is tested, from his relationship to his spirit.
It's grim subject matter, but Affleck teases out some darkly comic moments. That Patrick and Angie are out of their depth makes for some uncomfortable laughs in itself. The rest, of course, is what you would expect from a twisty, turny thriller about child abduction. In the end it's Casey's struggle, his aggression matched with his vulnerability, that is most compelling.
