Forgetting Sarah Marshall was released 15 years ago, but nearly everything about the infinitely rewatchable rom-com still holds up today. Somehow striking the perfect balance between raunchy and romantic, Jason Segel‘s script subverts the common love triangle trope in a really refreshing way: the love triangle is crucial to the plot of the movie, but no one is really that horrible of a person, and in any other scenario, you’d probably be rooting for Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). And at some points in this one, you might actually be! Sarah is as flawed as her ex, Peter (Segel), and the hotel concierge Rachel (Mila Kunis) are, in different but equally fleshed out ways. It’s a realistic take on romance we don’t see as often in rom-coms anymore; things now are more clear cut and characters fall squarely into tropes. But there’s a way to take the trope-y goodness we love in a rom-com and turn it into something that’s not so cookie-cutter. In that regard, Forgetting Sarah Marshall should still be considered among the genre’s best.
