I haven’t liked most of the Judd Apatow movies I’ve seen. 40 Year Old Virgin was okay, Knocked Up was tolerable, but that’s the most I’ve been able to say about them. So it’s kinda high praise that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is actually good.

I think the credit for this goes not to Apatow, but to the star and writer, Jason Segel, aka Marshall from How I Met Your Mother. For whatever reason, he strikes me as a lot more interesting and genuine than most of the Apatow crowd. (Jonah Hill, or whatever his name is, shows up in this movie, for instance, and his scenes were the worst in the movie because he is a reprehensible toad.)

So anyway, this is a TV-actor-centric movie – you’ve got Segel, Veronica Mars, Kenneth from 30 Rock, some lady from That 70s Show, &c – which ends up working out pretty well, even if all the people are basically playing their regular TV characters.

Are TV actors inherently one-dimensional? It’s possible, but hey, I like those characters, so it works. The characters are sympathetic and realistic, the plot arc sensible yet unpredictable, and in general it’s a Hollywood Breakup Movie except not so stupid.

If you saw that Vince Vaughn/Jennifer Aniston thing and wished they’d make a better version of it, this is your movie.