I Actually Hate Love Actually (But Watch It Anyway)

Christmas time is drawing to close. Now, the lead up to the annual booze fest where we really think that we can hold ourselves to drunken resolutions of extreme personal change and growth for the new year to come is beginning.

In this interim period between the day where we give each other presents and eat all the food, and the night where we drink all the alcohol and frantically look for someone to kiss at midnight or be destined for a year alone and unloved. it might be best to look back and reflect on some of the horrible Christmas movies that are unleashed upon untold innocents in this festive period.

Actually, instead of trying to discuss all the Christmas movies which may or may not be godawful, I'm just gonna focus on one. Because this is the one Christmas movie that since it came out I've ended up watching when it's on TV even though I think it is terrible and really don't like it. A movie that I know is objectively and subjectively bad, yet I am unable to not watch it to the end if I catch it on TV.

That movie is of course, Love Actually.

Well, duh.

From that guy who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, unleashing Hugh Grant and his affable bumbling onto an unsuspecting world. The movie that started the trend of telling multiple story lines about different couples set on a holiday. The movie where Liam Neeson doesn't have something taken from him that he will kill all the bad guys to get back. The movie that since its release in 2003 has become a permanent fixture of the Christmas period. The movie I can't help not watching when it's on television.

There are 10 separate story lines going on in this movie. 10 separate story lines. Focusing on 9 couples and one Rowan Atkinson. And none of the stories mesh or flow into each other in any meaningful or effective way. They sort of float in and out, lightly touching each other and are sort of loosely connected, which I understand is the point but it means that film seems directionless.

Aside from Octopus Boy. I always knew what his story was about.

The only thing that links the stories is that they're about relationships formed in and around Christmas time or something. I mean, some of the characters are inter-related or know each other. Emma Thompson's jilted wife character is the sister of Hugh Grant's prime minister character, and Laura Linney's awkward lonely woman character works for Alan Rickman's sort of cheating husband character and other characters are similarly sort of aware of one or two of the other characters. And... that's really about it.

Like the characters just exist in the periphery of other characters, which is a neat idea actually. Since this could show how the people we come into contact with in a day to day basis have their own lives with their own stories going on that we don't know about.

We all tend to think of ourselves as the stars of the story of our own lives, and the narrative structure used in the film could have been used to explore what a fallacy that is by showing how we all do it and therefore we aren't unique in thinking our story is important since everyone's story is important to them.

By focusing on so many seemingly unconnected story lines of seemingly random people, the film really could have highlighted that everyone sees themselves as the protagonist of their own story. But also showing how our individual narratives are barely noticed by anyone else since they themselves are wrapped up in their own narrative. Each story given the same importance since no one person's story necessarily matters more than any other.

"Tell me again how your story matters as much as mine."

However, that's not really the goal of Love Actually since it isn't really smart enough, or more fairly, self aware enough to attempt such a bold philosophic stance. It's like its narrative structure promises more than the movie attempts.

But also because really, the issue is not really that the stories aren't thematically linked, because they are. More so than I gave credit for earlier. That thematic tie of all being about relationships around Christmas is actually a stronger one than previously implied. By me. Than previously implied by me. Past me was wrong to mislead you so and is very sorry about that.

Since Love Actually, despite all the corny syrup it piles on everything, has a tinge of creepiness and sadness to it that you can totally miss if you focus on Hugh Grant fumblingly accidentally flirting with his (not) fat secretary or Rowan Atkinson being the most Rowan Atkinson-y jewelry salesman ever. About half the stories are actually about break ups or the lack of romantic love.

Yeah... they don't get together.

In terms of creepiness, you have the two love triangles. The one everyone remembers is where Rick from Walking Dead is love with his best friend's girl but unlike the Cars' song I linked to, she didn't even used to be his. He's in love with her just because he saw her, thinks she's perfect because she's pretty, and that's it.

Kiera Knightly's character even says to him that they haven't even really spoken to each other and she thought that he didn't like her. So, he's not even in love with her since he doesn't really know her, but just likes the way she Kiera Knightly's I guess? Then there's the infamous "sign scene" where he declares his love to her with cue cards while he pretends to be a group of carol singers so his best friend (her husband) who is in the house doesn't come to see.

He declares his love to her, while his best friend (again, her husband) is within earshot... that's just assdickery of another level. Like seriously, that is horrible. What a terrible, terrible friend. Yes, I hear the hordes of people who think this scene is cute or romantic say, "But the whole point is that he is not gonna act on those feelings, he's just expressing them to let her know and that's what great about it".

Yep, don't see anything inappropriate here.
People declare their undying love to their best friend's wives all the time.

And yes, he does say "enough" when she pity-kisses him but the fact is, he shouldn't have done the cards or let her know in the first place since he harboured those feelings the whole time his best friend was dating her without saying anything. As soon as he realised, "Oh, hold on, I'm infatuated with my best friend's girl", he should have killed those feelings immediately, not silently hold on to them and secretly lusting over her.

But okay, if he had to get those feelings out in order to put a stop to them, fair enough, but it's disrespectful as hell to his friend to do it WHILE THE GUY IS IN THE OTHER ROOM. That's just cold.

It's frozen.
(I am so sorry)

And I never liked that story line because of the creep factor, especially when it depicts the creepy thing as somehow romantic.

However, the other love triangle story is interesting because it's about a middle aged man in a relatively stale marriage nearly but not quite having an affair with his secretary. What's interesting is the way it depicts the affair, or more correctly how it depicts how the affair could have happened if Alan Rickman had gone through with it or if Emma Thompson hadn't caught him out... buying expensive jewelry for his secretary.

For it shows how the seemingly mundane grind of his life results in him being really bemused and yet intrigued by the attention his sultry younger secretary gives him. And that's what drives the near-affair, that attention. That feeling of excitement at a point in his life where he felt somehow dissatisfied.

"An attractive younger woman is flirting with me and I don't know how to process that."

But possibly the most interesting story is that of Laura Linney's character since it's a story we don't often get to see where a lonely woman chooses between romantic love and looking after her mentally challenged brother. And she chooses her brother. Despite the heartache it puts her through to always have to be on call.

To always have to put her wants and desires on the backburner or cast them asunder so she can be there for her brother. A brother who because of his mental issues cannot ever truly appreciate what she sacrifices for him. She gives up making passionate love to that walking Adonis pictured above because she forgot to, or won't, turn her phone off and her brother calls. That is an Adonis who she has had a crush on for years and yet when she has him in her arms, she gives him up near instantly for her brother.

She is on the phone to her brother while that hunk of man-beef is semi-naked on her bed.

While that might strike some people as sad, I see it as incredibly admirable. She has made a conscious choice to always be there for her brother even if that means not being able to live her life independent of him. Now, that is probably not the best way for her to live her life, but her dedication to her brother and the hurt it causes, it a story not often told or shown in a big budget romantic comedy, limited usually to overly serious indie dramas.

Maybe that is why I always watch Love Actually despite not liking it. Yes, there are too many stories and because of that, the narrative seems disjointed and you can't really get into some of the stories or identify with some characters. However, that means if you dislike one story, just wait a bit and another more interesting one will come along.

And I guess I can't really fault it for that, even if I still dislike I'm gonna watch it next time it's on just like I always do.


References:

Love Actually Wikipedia page

The Fresh Prince of Egypt

Now, this is an epic all about how

My life got flipped-turned upside down

I'd like to read the papyrus

If you'd just sit

I'll tell you how I became a prince of the land called Egypt

West of the great river Nile born and raised

By the pyramids was where I spent most of my days

Swappin' out gods' heads, Anubis for Nu

And all riding some chariots outside of the school

But when I was born, a pharaoh who was up to no good

Started killing the babies in my neighborhood

Got put in one little basket because my mom was scared

She said 'You're movin' with the river Nile to get out of here'

I was washed towards the palace and when it came near

The basket bumped the pharaoh's wife in the rear

If anything I could say that my luck was rare

Since she thought 'Nah, forget it' - 'Yo, Pharaoh another heir'

I grew up to manhood and learnt very late

I was a Hebrew, you know my people were slaves

I looked at the kingdom

I was finally equipped

To abandon my throne as a prince of Egypt

With the recent release of Exodus: Gods and Kings, many across the vast desert plains of the internet have asked a vital question in these difficult times of famine and ceaseless plague of cat videos: why are they making another Moses story when the best Moses story ever has already been made?

everything I've seen in trailers is like mmmmm yeah but that looked better in The Prince of Egypt
— 1st Noelle Stevenson (@Gingerhazing) December 11, 2014

also The Prince of Egypt is a musical so like. In what world would anyone spend money on Exodus when they could rewatch The Prince of Egypt.
— 1st Noelle Stevenson (@Gingerhazing) December 11, 2014

Those are valid points I suppose but I don't like getting into the "why are they rebooting this [movie/franchise/whatever], the original was so much better" argument, especially when the first movie in this instance is itself a retelling of a story thousands of years old. But also because the whole argument does seem to rest on a denial of any new reboot as unnecessary out-of-hand, which I don't really agree with.

Culture is based on the repurposing and retelling of older narratives again and again, making those tales reflect the times in some way or another. So even if the retelling doesn't capture the intent of the original narrative (or is terrible), it can often say something about the time in which that retelling took place. Like how now is the era of the gritty reboot which reflects a societal need for dark realism which filmmakers achieve by shooting everything in blue scale and making all their characters moody, since that's how you achieve realism apparently.

Also, I really don't want to talk about Exodus since I haven't seen it  and don't plan to, but rather am using that as a means to talk about Prince of Egypt because it actually is a superb retelling of the story of Moses. As an animated musical!

"I can show you the plagues,
Water becoming blood and frog filled.
Tell me, Rameses, when will
You let my people go?"

Which itself reflects the 1990s revival of animated musicals spearheaded by Disney and copied by other studios, like Dreamworks and Don Bluth. But we're not here to talk about Dob Bluth's attempts to copy the winning Disney formula in films such as Thumbelina. No, we gonna talk about Dreamworks' attempt to copy the winning Disney formula with Prince of Egypt.

But actually aside from the prevalence of Disney elements in the form of musical scenes and a couple of goofy moments, Prince of Egypt is a surprising mature film. Like really mature actually, for what is ostentatiously supposed to be a children's animated feature.

The film opens with slaves being whipped and worked to exhaustion before cutting to mass infanticide. We of course then see the protagonist's mother weeping as she has to give up her baby with only the thinnest of hopes he'll survive, singing one of the saddest lullabies in cinematic history as a single tear falls down her cheek and her hair is blown across her face.

Drama!

Did I mention this goes on while babies are being slaughtered in the hundreds? Because that is literally happening in the background of this scene. It is the driving motivation for the reason she is putting her youngest child in a basket and putting him at the mercy of the current of one of the biggest rivers in the world because that is a safer bet than the horror behind them. Again, this is supposed to be a children's animated film.

Now, some people might read that and think I'm against violence or scenes of brutality in children's movies. I'm not, I'm just impressed at how far this movie goes for it. Like it really tries to go for the mature angle but doesn't just hint at some heavy stuff, it hits you right in the face and confronts you with it. Some of the scenes in this movie are legitimately terrifying, like the plagues.

Which is appropriate in an attempt to adapt one of the heaviest and most epic stories in history, one that forms that cornerstone of several belief systems. You know they took care in adapting it since they say so at the beginning of the film, although they admit some changes have been made to the source material.

And I have to say in all honesty, most of the changes they do make to the story are welcome additions to the Moses tale.

I for one quite enjoyed the introduction of a snowman as Moses' goofy sidekick.

Possibly the biggest change was making Moses and Rameses brothers. That is brilliant. In the original biblical text, Moses is just raised in the palace and is actually found by the pharaoh's daughter, not his wife like in the movie. Also, his biological mother manages to end up being his nanny for the first few years of his life.

That is fine and all, but making it the pharaoh's wife who finds Moses' basket and having the pharaoh adopt him as a second son adds a Shakespearean level of drama to the already heavy tale. Because this means that later when Moses is trying to get the pharaoh to let his people go, the pharaoh isn't just the stubborn ruler of Egypt, he is Moses' brother.

Like with Loki and Thor, this estranged brotherly dynamic creates more tension and drama than if the pharaoh had been some ruler that had no real connections to Moses. Especially since the film spends a lot of time building up the relationship between the two and you can see the affection each has for the other.

So, when the two brothers are pitted against each other in the second half of the film, there are levels of betrayal and anguish which wouldn't have been possible if Moses was just some dude that lived in the palace.

Pictured: Brotherly betrayal and anger.

Another thing that I noticed when I watched Prince of Egypt again for this post, is that there is no moment to breathe in the narrative. Each scene rushes into the next with no real moments of quiet to chill for a second and absorb the intensity of the scene before. There isn't a lull in the whole film.

It starts with slaves building gigantic statues, then pans to mass infanticide, before showing us the heartbreak of a mother giving up her child, then that child being swept across a raging river narrowly escaping being crushed or eaten by boats, crocodiles or hippopotamuses, then cut to slight drop in pace as Moses is discover by the pharaoh's wife... cut directly to a high speed chariot race between Moses and Rameses all grown up. And that's just within the first five minutes or so.

The film's pacing is relentless. One heavy scene leads directly into the next, the plot progressing at a breakneck speed with no reprise. Which really moves the film along and adds to the intensity and drama of the story.

But one of the real reasons I wanted to talk about Prince of Egypt is because it is gorgeous.

Gorgeous

Seriously, this is a beautiful film. The visuals and designs are just stunning, while the mix of traditional hand drawn animation with touches of CGI are at times breathtaking.

I was tempted to just put up a bunch of screenshots from the movie with captions saying, "Look at that, no really, look at that!" and "I'm telling you, look at that!" for this post and be done with it, the pictures saying more than I ever could.

Look at that!!!

The framing in that image is perfect. And using the statue behind the pharaoh to symbolise his authority and the weight of tradition and power he holds? Fantastic. And the side profiles make for a more sharp and compelling contrast to the wide expanse of the background. It's a gorgeous shot in a film fill of gorgeous shots.

And the visuals often strikingly enhance the drama unfolding onscreen in clever and majestic ways. Couple this with some effective and suitably epic music, you end up with a scene like The Plagues, which is just amazing from beginning to end.

Like I said, amazing from beginning to end. It just encapsulates the entire movie within one scene. The plagues themselves are depicted with awe-inspiring devastation and some of the imagery is unbelievably evocative and striking. And the animation snaps with such pace and sense of movement. The cuts between the two brothers and

All of this to mirror the song, which is extremely powerful. I love the way it builds with the choir near whispering as it begins before belting up to the heavens. Also, while the choir are singing about the plagues and the devastation God has wrought on the Egyptians, Moses and Rameses instead sing about their relationship. And this is where making them brothers really shines.

Moses sings about his extreme guilt and anguish at having being chosen by God to be his prophet, knowing the hurt it is causing Rameses but resolute in freeing his people. And Rameses sings about the bitter sense of betrayal and anger at the little brother whom he loved and can't understand why the joking happy-go-lucky kid he grew up with would be doing this to his kingdom and him.

Placing their brotherly rivalry over the backdrop of the terror of the plagues just pushes the drama into another playing field entirely, which perfectly matches the intensity of the music and the really powerful imagery in the scene.

Oh, and Ralph "I am Lord Voldemort" Fiennes voices Rameses and sings his part in the song. I have nothing more to say, I am content.

References:

Prince of Egypt Wikipedia page

Post Not Found - Try Again Next Week (Listen to My Music in the Meantime)

I tried but I seriously can't write a blog post this week. The two topics I wanted to write about (both of which are fantastic by the way) I need to do more research on and I am just too tired from life stuff to even.

I don't like that since I have made it something of a personal goal or target for myself to write a blog post ever week and I've been quite good at keeping to that. I've only missed the occasional one here or there and I'm kinda proud of that consistency.

However, I am totally giving this week a miss because I'm just exhausted and not prepared and I got dumped last week so I think I get a pass.

Hey, he said in a completely natural segue way, do you guys know that I write music? Because I do. I even record it and put it online for people to listen. You can download it too... for free! Yes, for free! Just go here for free music: https://soundcloud.com/caleb-sherriff

Instead of writing a proper blog post, this is just a shameless plug for my music and if you think that I should feel shame for plugging my music with no qualms when you came here for a blog post, dammit - I'm sorry, I guess?

But yeah, I totally feel no shame about this. I like writing songs and I like people listening to them and realising that they have never known true emotion until I encapsulated it in song form.

Have a listen, share with your friends, download a song, remix it until it's completely unrecognisable, I don't care as long as you check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/caleb-sherriff.

Thanks, I be back next week with a proper blog post but here's a picture of kittens in mugs just cos.

Yes, they're little kittens in mugs and it's frickin' adorable. We get it, jeez.

Did I mention you can check out my music at this link: https://soundcloud.com/caleb-sherriff?

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Again and Again and Again

This is about to get personal. More personal than I have ever been on this blog. So if you have an issue with personal space since intimacy with another human being gives you a bad rash, maybe you should sit this one out. It might get uncomfortably intimate up in here. No lie, tears may be shed. I know I have shed more than a few.

My girlfriend broke up with me this past week. Don't worry, this isn't a pity post. I'm not looking for sympathy or for people to go "ah, poor baby". However, hugs, if offered, will be appreciated and reciprocated. Rather this is just a rambling post about break ups.

This is my third break up in two years. So you could say my heart has gotten so used to break up pains, it feels more weird when it's not breaking than when it is. Well, that's not entirely true but heartache has become a familiar friend to me over the past couple years, possibly because I've been too clumsy with my heart, dropping it all over the place.

I know clumsy hamster buddy, I know.

Now, here's the thing. I have no walls. Like metaphoric walls. Around my heart, To protect it against getting hurt by people because I let them in. Normal people have walls, I know this. And people who have intimacy issues or have been hurt in the past have many walls, often tall ones. I know this too because I've often had to scale them, which I did like wall-crawling Spider-Man going all arachnid over the place. But me? I'm an open person. Perhaps too open.

Although I have been hurt in the past, I haven't set guards around my heart protecting it against those who gain my trust only to cast it aside like an used paper coffee cup. My trust is a novelty mug from Disneyland Paris and should be treated as such. By which I mean treat that shit with care, it's from freaking France!

(Note: Neither myself nor my metaphoric novelty trust mug are in fact from France or are associated with Disneyland Paris. This was merely a metaphor for comedic hyperbolic purposes.)

Pictured: The place of magic and wonder that the metaphoric mug which symbolises my trust is not legally affiliated with.

And in all fairness, only in one of my past relationships did the person I let in betray my trust in any malicious or callous way. However, that person had a multitude of issues, like a whole host. Insecurity, trust, confidence, intimacy... No seriously, if her issues were elves, they could have stormed Mordor in an afternoon, those giant troll-pulling gates be damned.

And I tried to help her with some of those issues, I did. But I should have learnt from my previous relationship that you can't fix someone, especially if they don't really want to be fixed. You can only be there for them and hope they right themselves and that when they do, they still want or need you around, but I'm already getting my story mixed up.

Let's start at the end. Well, the end of my first relationship in the past couple of years. Relationship 1. This was with a girl I loved more than I thought it ever possible to love someone. My every waking thought was about her: what she might be doing, when I would be seeing her next, how much I liked the way she did certain things, or the things she said or how beautiful she was. I wasn't just in love, I was obsessed. To say I put her on a pedestal is an understatement of such gigantic proportions as to be laughable. I couldn't understand how someone so amazing had chosen to be with me.

I tried to find an image to convey an overwhelming sense of amazement but couldn't find anything appropriate.
Instead, enjoy this image from The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Pulling Rhino's Pants Down in Public.

The problem was that she didn't love me back. She cared for me but she didn't love me. However, even if she had loved me back, it wouldn't have really been a healthy relationship. I was far too infatuated and had wrapped my identity around her, losing myself in the process, sacrificing my needs for her time and time again. Don't get me wrong, she never used me. I did this all on my own accord. I just wanted her to be happy.

Did I mention that she suffered from depression since she was still in love with her ex and also had suicidal thoughts? No? So yeah, that was a thing. I often had to talk to her about why life, although it can be cruel and ugly, can be wonderful, beautiful, and is worth living. Also, I spoke to her about her ex, thinking that if we talked it out, she would get over him and possibly heal and start loving me. That obviously didn't quite work out the way I hoped.

Again, this is not to judge her or paint her in a negative light. She is a wonderful person that had some things she needed to sort out on her own and shouldn't have been in a relationship... which is why (long story short) she eventually broke up with me.

Which destroyed me. Absolutely ended me. I wept for weeks (months?) on end. I felt emotional pain so piercing I literally couldn't breathe at points, my chest feeling like it would burst, my mind unable to comprehend how a break up could hurt so much. That her rejection of me and my love would ruin me so, give me so much pain that I would break down in tears, gasping for breath. I had break ups in the past but nothing like that. Nothing could be like that. I was utterly broken.

I don't have an image that could possibly capture the pain I felt so here's a picture of two ducklings in a wine glass.
You're welcome.

It basically took me about a year to get over it. Problem was that I started another relationship with someone I shouldn't have. Not only because that person is the one with the host of issue elves but because I wasn't ready for a relationship and shouldn't have been anywhere near one. Especially not with someone who had issues of their own resulting from stuff that had gone down in their life which had scarred them and that they needed to deal with. This is Relationship 2.

I won't really go into much detail Relationship 2 since it just is something I realised wasn't a good thing. Essentially, I was trying to convince myself I loved her to prove I was over Relationship 1 - Fun fact: I wasn't. This meant I told her a lot of things in the first couple of months about how I still cared for my ex that I shouldn't have told her and helped fuel her insecurities for the remainder of our relationship.

When I was with her, I had to deal with the drama (and there was so much drama - like all of the drama) her issues created. And once I did get over my ex, I realised that the relationship I was in wasn't healthy and most of the stress in my life came from dealing with all the drama. It just wasn't good. But eventually Relationship 2 ended, which was good.

And I felt good. For the first time over a year or so, I felt whole again. I felt myself and not reliant on another person. Enter my latest relationship, the one which just ended. Relationship 3. It was great, my first healthy relationship in years.

We fitted together so well, it was ridiculous how natural it felt being together. It wasn't like I had another person come into my life, it was more like there was a hole in my life I didn't know about and she just fitted into it like she always should have been there but I hadn't found her yet.

I'm not sure if she is the glass slipper or I am in this scenario.
You wouldn't believe how many pictures of bra fittings you get when you put "perfect fit" as your search term in Google though.

And I wasn't obsessed or lost myself in her like I did in Relationship 1. I didn't put her on a pedestal but saw her as a person. Now, that doesn't mean I don't think she is amazing. I do. She is. So amazing. Like real pretty and smart. And such a nerd. Like a legit nerd, dorky and everything. Cute and adorable. Timid at times, and at other times stubbornly firm in her resolution and opinions. And she liked me. We were good together. We were happy together.

But it was starting to get real. As in a real relationship. Remember how I mention earlier how I don't have any walls? Well, that tends to mean that I fall in love quite easily since I don't really have any barriers. I've found this can be a problem since the people I fall in love with often don't fall in love with me at the same rate because they tend to have a lot of walls up. And that's what happened here, I was falling quite fast for her and she just couldn't keep up since she still had her walls up. I was scaling them like nobody's business because it's personal, don't pry.

Anyway, another long story short, she didn't feel ready for a long term relationship and therefore ended it before it went any further. I don't blame her. If someone isn't ready, they're not ready, and nothing you can say or do can really change that. I'm just sad it ended. It hurts but I don't think I've fully processed it yet since I haven't had a cathartic release of tears yet, although I have cried. But I'm sure that's on the way.

Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to be talking about Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Yeah, this pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

I have watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall with each of my past three girlfriends at their request. So it does seem to have some resonance, possibly because it is the greatest break up movie ever. Well, let me rephrase that, it is the greatest break up romantic comedy.

For although it is a romantic comedy and follows the formulaic narrative structure of a romcom with the cliches associated with the genre, it plays with that structure and those cliches in some clever ways. Where most romcoms are all about the couple meeting and forming a relationship, this is all about how the end of one relationship leads to another, so the forming of the relationship is still there but it is framed differently.

But where Forgetting Sarah Marshall really shines is in how honestly it depicts the hurt and grieving process one goes through after a break up. And most of that comes from the fearless performance from Jason Segel.

His character Peter starts the movie naked, literally baring himself to the audience at his most intimate and vulnerable. And it is at this point after we are introduced to his character that he is dumped by Sarah Marshall. She rejects him when he is barring all to her, she rejects him when he being his most open to her.

You can also totally find a frame grab of his penis online if you were so inclined.

Segel isn't afraid to portray Peter through all the stages of grief and insecurity that he goes through after his break up. Although played for comedy, his performance is honest and raw in the way it just shows Peter either scared, hurt, weeping, bitter, numb, depressed, and vulnerable with no real filter. The fact he wrote the film as well just elevates my respect for the man.

And it's this honesty that I think makes this movie resonate with a lot of people. Oh. it has a lot of funny moments and memorable lines, but it's the fact the film's depiction of the heartache following a break up and the difficulty of letting go to start a new relationship (with Mila Kunis' Rachel) seems real that really strikes a chord.

There's a moment when Peter is just hit by a series of memories of when he and Sarah were together and happy that just hit him one after the other via flashback and that is so true. Memories of a relationship can just strike out of nowhere and hit you in quick succession. A part of one memory makes you remember the next memory and something in that memory makes you think about another memory and it just goes from there.

Like the time when you played strip backgammon which made you think of how pretty her hair is, which made you think of that one time she tied her hair up and although it was different she still looked beautiful because her eyes are so striking, which made you think of that time you just spent ages gazing into each others eyes because you were being sappy and so on and so on.

Look. The cuteness before the impending agonising heartache.

The movie doesn't shy aware from the ugliness that happens after a break up when you just feel worthless and are so filled with hurt and anger and insecurity and loss of self. Again, this is within the context of a romantic comedy.

Also, a nice touch is that when Rachel finally accepts Peter at the end of the film, she accepts him when he is naked. Again, when he is at his most intimate and exposed, where Sarah Marshall rejected him, she accepts him. Which is a kinda touching and humorous moment.

Obviously, there have been dramas which have dealt with heartache in a more intense manner, but I doubt if it could be more true. It might go depict it with more seriousness or raw emotion, but the depiction in Forgetting Sarah Marshall is as true as can be. And I think it should be applauded for that just as much for anything Paul Rudd's character Kano says or the great gift to mankind that is Peter's Muppet Dracula musical.

Anyway, thanks for reading me ramble on about my failed romantic relationships before I declared Forgetting Sarah Marshall to be the greatest break up movie ever as matter of fact. I just wanted to share what's been going because, hey, I can. It's my blog.

Thanks for reading though.


References:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Wikipedia page