The scenes from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” which didn’t make the final cut certainly deserved their fate.
It’s one of the lessons gleaned from the extras-laden DVD package of the hit spring comedy.
“Marshall,” the best of the recent films from the Judd Apatow assembly line, actually improves on second viewing.
The supporting players register better, and you can marvel anew at both Russell Brand’s take on the addled rock archetype as well as Jason Segel’s terrific lead performance.
As for the extras, well it’s a case of sifting through the clutter to find the gold.
The deleted scenes feel as if they were stripped away from another, inferior comedy. Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) is an unsympathetic love interest in the theatrical version, but watching her rant and rave while astride a runaway in one deleted scene reduces her to a pure villain. Glad the scene got left behind.
Far better is a featurette on Brand himself. His role was originally conceived as a British intellectual, but Brand’s screen tests forced Segel and co. to completely re-imagine the character. That’s the kind of juicy info we want in our DVD extras.
The bonus material also include snippets of the lead characters’ audition reels as well as a faux children’s TV segment featuring Aldous Snow (Brand) extolling the virtues of the letter “U.” Good stuff.
(Photo: Kristen Bell and Russell Brand make life miserable for our hero, Peter (Jason Segel) in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”)
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