It's the main character's penis, awkwardly exposed to viewers and costars alike. The penis never really leaves, even if it is not on camera for most of the "Sarah Marshall's" 11o minutes.
Like the films of its producer, Judd Apatow ("Superbad," "Knocked Up"), then, it is a film whose emphasis is on the male libido. But what's notable about the presence of the penis is the near-complete absence of female nudity to balance it out.
This curious lack of female objectification illustrates a novel and refreshing aspect of "Sarah Marshall," written by its star, Jason Segel, and directed by Nicholas Stoller: It has three-dimensional, likable, understandable female characters.
That's an even greater achievement when you consider that this is a bitter, seemingly semi-autobiographical breakup comedy. It concerns the attempts of Segel's Peter Bretter to get over the titular Sarah (Kristin Bell), the star of a television series for which he writes music. These take him to Hawai'i, ironically to the resort where she, unbeknownst to him, is also staying with her new boyfriend (Russell Brand).
But Sarah and Mila Kunis' Rachel, the hotel employee who becomes Peter's new love interest, are not the idealized sex objects of Apatow's films. They have histories, anxieties, and understandable motivations. Both hold their own in terms of humor as well.
"Sarah Marshall" manages to somehow create a film-world in which we don't have to dislike characters. It does this by using the very element that makes it comic--crossed wires.
As in Apatow's films, the laughs here are produced when characters react to their environment in ways neither the audience nor their costars expect. Here, that is the source of the complications--the characters don't understand one another well enough to avoid offending one another. The fact that the way they do this is often comical is what creates "Sarah Marshall's" success.
Of course, there is also the penis. The humor here is often lowbrow and sexual. In fact, the sex-based comedy of "Sarah Marshall" is well beyond Apatow's efforts in terms of graphicness and frankness, especially when Brand's Aldous Snow is involved.
But unlike Apatow's films, sex is merely one of the film-making tools, rather than the focus of the entire film. For Apatow, maturity is something people attain as a side-effect of the pursuit of the ideal sex life. Here, maturity is the destination and sex is merely an important, prevalent part of the journey.
And so, oddly, the sexual ribaldry is the disguise maturity and realism are wrapped in to fool viewers. That is the real secret to "Sarah Marshall's" success.
That and dicks.
His dick is in this movie.
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