Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974."

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall (6/10)

by Tony Medley

Running time 111 minutes.

For my money, any movie that starts out with full frontal male nudity has nowhere to go but up. Back in the old days, in the days of the Code, nudity was verboten and movies were better. Critics like Richard Schickel (Time Magazine) think it’s great now that movies can deal with sex openly. To an extent, he has a point. Sex can now be dealt with openly with adult conversation. But it should be limited by good taste. I don’t find two people in the actual act of intercourse to be particularly entertaining or necessary in order to deal with sex frankly in an adult manner, and there is a lot of that in this film. In the old days films dealt with sex in a much more nuanced way, the way with which it is dealt in polite society, and the films were intelligent and entertaining, leaving a lot to your imagination. I don’t need to see body parts to get the reality of sexual situations. There are two types of scenes in which I can hear the director yelling at me, “I have no talent; this is the best I can do!” Those two scenes are scenes of people urinating and defecating and those with full frontal male nudity. This movie has both.

Directed by first-timer Nicholas Stoller, this is an attempt to tell in a comedic way the story of a man’s breakdown after being dumped by his girlfriend. Producer Judd Apatow specializes in vulgarity and poor taste. As a result, although this is mildly entertaining, it’s gross, profane, and relatively unfunny. It stands to epitomize the aught-generation filmmakers’ assault on comedy. Apatow is responsible for low common denominator efforts like “Talledega Nights” (2006) and “Anchorman” (2004). He did come up with winners in “Knocked Up” last year, and “Fun With Dick and Jane” (2005), so he is capable of competent work when he isn’t groveling around in the gutter. Apatow is in line with his cohorts like Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey and others who are doing their best to kill quality comedy with their dumbed-down, anti-intellectual flim flam. Good comedy doesn’t need shock value or stupidity to get attention.

Apatow apparently has a male genitalia fetish because he says he is going to include full frontal male nudity in every film he can. Anybody who is on a crusade to popularize male flashing has a serious problem.

The plot is pretty simple. Peter Bretter (Jason Segel, who also wrote the script) is dumped by his girlfriend of five years, the titular Sarah (Kristen Bell). He goes to Hawaii, runs into Sarah who is with her new boyfriend, tattooed, rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) and meets the beautiful, commiserative Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis), who is a lot more beautiful than Sarah, a TV star.

This thing really had me squirming for about the first 45 minutes. But when Aldous Snow becomes a major part of the film, it picks up considerably. This was like watching the Kansas-Memphis NCAA final. It was a loser for a long time, but it came down to the final seconds. It came close but, unlike Kansas, it didn’t make the grade.

My discomfort was exacerbated by two girls who sat next to me. They laughed uproariously at Peter’s nudity at the beginning and they continued to laugh at inappropriate moments. My impression was that their laughter was nervousness resulting from discomfort in seeing a totally naked man. They were joined by other women in the audience. I didn’t hear any men laugh. The rest of their laughter at things that just weren’t funny seemed like they didn’t get it and they laughed because if they didn’t laugh, people would think they didn’t get it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything to get.

I really didn’t view this as much of a comedy. It’s more a light romance. I only laughed a couple of times, and they were at the over-the-top performance of Russell Brand as the profligate, tattooed rocker. To his credit, he has stated that had he known there would be so much frontal male nudity, he wouldn’t have signed on for the film. Even though the Hawaii locations are beautiful, without him the film would be a big dud.

April 15, 2008