My Grandma Reviews: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

I don't want to get your hopes up, but this is a great review.  I could barely type fast enough.

"I can't believe you recommended that movie!  It's so sad to think that sex is put in the front like that, and people can sleep with everyone else -- I tell you, this movie is going to turn children and young fellows and girls into thinking that this is what is done all the time.  You know, the part where he's naked, and she's up against him, especially at the end?  That's terrible! Terrible!  This was terrible.  Who made this movie?  I feel very sad to think that this is commonplace, to think this is the way life is, and if you're tired of one partner all you have to do is turn around and sleep with another.  It made me feel like everything is different in this country with the sex issue.  Young people who see this -- is this the way they feel life is?  The lessons we learn so early in life -- but to see this in the movies, he's all naked and she's bumping up against him and he's happy, and he just changed from one girl to the other, I don't know, I can't understand it. 

"We never saw scenes like that in the movies before.  More and more these days, I mean, I know it's in every movie I see but this really seemed excessive.  We used to have restrictions on this kind of stuff, don't they have restrictions?  To see them both in bed, he's bumping up against her, they're pumping away -- I never saw a movie that was quite so loose on the sex theme.  I guess they took those restrictions away.  You know, some people have never even seen that, and they'll see this movie and get ideas.  A girl in bed and someone on top of her.  I'm 92 years old and I'm shocked, I couldn't believe my eyes.  And even at the end, why did he have to be naked and she runs up and gets up close to him.  That's just excessive.  I don't know.  There are insinuations in other movies, you know.  But it has never been this bold. 

"Okay, and besides all that sex stuff, this movie had no essence to me.  Big deal -- he made a new life for himself, fine, but I didn't believe any of it.  All of a sudden he changed his whole personality.  This wasn't how real people behave and live their lives.  He's so blue, he's a lost soul, but all of a sudden he makes up that puppet show, and that shows that just because he's in love, suddenly he's creative and he's doing things again, and he's like a new person.  In a flash.  Didn't seem right to me.  Going from an awfully unhappy person to something completely the reverse -- I didn't buy it.  And that actor is sort of dumb looking too.

"I don't know how they ever produce a picture like this.  Even in that movie [Knocked Up] last year, they were in bed and insinuated these kinds of things, and I guess they showed some of it, but here there were two or three scenes that were beyond graphic, beyond anything in any movie I've seen.  I never saw two people in bed, uncovered, pumping away like that.  And from behind!  You know, a lot of young people, watching this, they get ideas, they'll decide they don't have to get married, they can just have one lover after another, and they will see this and learn how to do this.  People will see this and take a lover.  Or they are young and haven't seen how these things work, where you put the one thing in the other thing and then they go home and they try things like this.  I never saw a scene where someone got on top of someone else in the movies like this and you can see all of what you could see. 

"And, you know, you wouldn't believe what thought passed my mind while I was watching the movie -- the setting was Hawaii -- I have a theory that people from Hawaii are behind this movie, the tourism people -- and they paid off these movie makers to make a picture to show how loose everything is in Hawaii and what fun you can have, so people will be stimulated and say, 'oh, next time I go on vacation I will go to Hawaii,' and maybe they paid off these movie people just to project an image of Hawaii and how loose things are and how beautiful it is, and the beach, and the weather, and how you can have sex with anyone you want.  I wonder if these movie makers were getting paid behind the scenes to advertise Hawaii, where you can sleep with anyone you want and have all that to drink, all those drinks, in the whole movie, and the beautiful beaches, and these ordinary looking, sad men getting the pretty women, I really pictured -- not seriously -- but I had that thought pass through my mind that this was all just an advertisement for Hawaii.  I mean, even I started thinking maybe I want to go there."

Comments

[Jen]

Hmm - not too sure I can buy outrage from someone who signed off on the concept of the village prostitute...

[Dave!]

You need to start podcasting these... they are absolutely classic. Your grandma is my favorite movie critic ever. Take that Pauline Kael! :)

[Daniel]

"And that actor is sort of dumb looking too."

Made me laugh out loud.

[reena]

I do think your grandmother's right that Judd Apatow has made genitalia and extremely graphic sex much much more mainstream. There have been really graphic movies before, but none that were so popular and glossy.

[CLK]

I love how she rags on it and then is like "maybe I want to go to Hawaii". She is the best movie critic ever.

[Jennifer]

Oh. My. Gosh. Your grandmother is brilliant. If not a podcast, then at least a tape recorder. At the very least, you need to start tape-recording these conversations and transcribing them word-for-word - there is often so much more that people say than you can remember, even when you're typing as they go.

Your grandmother brings a very interesting perspective, and she reminds me a lot of Professor Laura Nader (sister of Ralph Nader) who is teaching a class I'm in right now. They seem to have similar perspectives, being so old and having seen so much...

I think your grandmother is absolutely right in many ways.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like every time I see a Judd Apatow movie, I lose a little more innocence, I become a little more desensitized, sex becomes cheaper and less significant. I love the movies (Superbad was a disappointment, but I liked Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up), and I do think they do well showing how even amidst all of the cheap sex in meaningless life filled with vulgarity, one can find love... or at least one can hope... it's how you have to find love nowadays... but they really are so graphic.. I guess it's just a reflection of the way life is among people like us now, but I'm not naive enough to think that movies like these don't also produce expectations for behavior.

[Jennifer]

Oh, and:

"And that actor is sort of dumb looking too."

and

"I mean, even I started thinking maybe I want to go there."

Sheer brilliance. I laughed out loud. She's so right. I started wanting to move away to Hawaii and send my days as a hotel clerk meeting and greeting people. I don't know what it is about Judd Apatow movies. He really does seem to have this thing for casting gorgeous women and ugly men. What's up with that??

[Brian]

"He really does seem to have this thing for casting gorgeous women and ugly men. What's up with that??"

Jen, have you seen Apatow? Have you seen his wife? The man writes what he knows.

Also, I was thinking the same thing re: the village prostitute. No offense to Jeremy's grandmom, but old people frustrate me.

[fancastgirl]

I haven't seen this movie yet (had to watch Harold & Kumar first!), but apparently all the real "Sarah Marshalls" are pissed with the ad campaign and are lashing back!

http://bigpicture.fancast.com/2008/04/fancast_feature_sarah_marshall.html

[Sell Structured Settlement Payments]

I will surely see this movie.

[Emily]

WOW! This is really an excellent review. I liked the same parts as the previous comments mentioned-- the dumb looking actor and her thinking maybe she wants to go to Hawaii...

I love her commentary, too. "Terrible! This was terrible!" "That's just excessive. I don't know."

Sorry, I'm new to your blog. Do you post these often? Because this is the first thing I've read on here and it was really amazing.

[PG]

Old people aren't hung up on hypocrisy the way young people are. Young people believe that it's incredibly wrong to behave one way in public and another way in private; old people think this is just common sense. It's wrong to show people having casual sex in the movies; using the services of a prostitute, so long as one does it discreetly and safely, is bad but just how life is.