Gail was written for Kristen Wiig, with Amy Poehler also considered; both possibilities interest the panel, but Banks and her chemistry with Higgins are strongly supported. — Juliet Litman
Brie Larson reportedly auditioned; Beca is inferred rather than confirmed, with Aubrey also suggested. Her Scott Pilgrim coolness, try-hard quality and pop-singing background make her possible but not clearly preferable.
Jon Hamm: definitely, with Mad Men and The Town happening at the same time. — Bill Simmons
Melissa McCarthy is a tough one; The Heat is praised, and this is called her best performance, though her New York Times best-actors-of-the-century listing is debated.
Maya Rudolph: not her apex; her SNL stretch and The Good Place judge run rank higher. — Bill Simmons
Rose Byrne: no; Neighbors is more likely. Apatow: probably not, since he did not direct it. — Bill Simmons
For wedding movies it is a finals between My Best Friend's Wedding and this, possibly adding Wedding Crashers. — Bill Simmons
Paul Feig, who created Freaks and Geeks and made Ghostbusters, definitely peaked here critically and commercially. — Mina Kimes
For shit scenes in movies, Succession and Harold and Kumar are cited and it deserves a follow-up pod, but this would be the peak; it is agreed as Apex Mountain for diarrhea in a movie.
A Lamar Jackson aside becomes the joke podcast Leave Lamar Alone.
U.S.–China cooperation, Golden Globes category fraud, some casting choices, government transparency, public attention, unchanged cable news, and Teddy’s press manner
The movie drags in the middle and is about 15 minutes fat, most obviously the McBrayer plotline: funny, but by the end you wonder why it was in the movie, a roughly 20-minute detour; the hosts would rather have had more Hader, more hotel staff or ten more minutes of Jonah Hill than graphic sex five times and instructional material that has no bearing on Peter.
From around 2003 to 2004 through the rest of the decade R rated comedies felt obliged to get their bang for the buck, which this film handled in the first ten minutes; the better decision would have been to cut that material and use the five-minute Kristen Wiig yoga instructor deleted scene instead.
In the context of Apatow comedies it feels pretty lean, since the standing criticism is that they run 20 to 40 minutes too long; this one is under two hours even in the extended unrated version, about 118 minutes plus credits, so it is a little fat but not that bad.
Siding with the drag complaint, one host would break up the middle with one more FaceTime scene with Hater, since there are about 15 minutes of waiting for her to break up with Russell Brand and have the come-to-Jesus moment with Segel; otherwise nothing has aged badly and the film could be released now largely unchanged.
The title; Turtle Bay; Bill Hader; the celebrity-appendage boyfriend concept; the Do Something song and the Access Hollywood music video; Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime; Animal Instincts; the salary cap cast
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is an awesome title that explains the movie and is memorable; the film gets a lot under the wire that would ordinarily be noted to death, such as male nudity, how much he cries, whether he is likable and whether his music is good enough for a tortured genius, since nobody would ever see this musical outside a weird Los Feliz playhouse; it could easily have been called The Breakup or Inside of You.
Turtle Bay has aged well and drew a lot of questions; it is one of those movies that makes you want to go, another travel saver; Bill Hader has aged fantastically as an early Hader whose career has obviously changed.
The celebrity appendage boyfriend concept holds up; a favorite real example was Ellen Pompeo's husband, who the hosts mix up with the Jets and Jaguars running back Chris Ivory, the man always standing next to the celebrity in the Us Weekly photo, a cottage industry.
How good and terrible the Do Something song is has aged well, realistic enough to be a real song, with 'sodomy' among the words he has to change; the genius touch is Access Hollywood closing its show with a music video, exactly as it would.
Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime and Animal Instincts have aged the best for one host, who calls the Crime Scene material a favorite part of the movie and wishes there were a hundred rejected Billy Baldwin takes on YouTube to loop, with the Seinfeld bass line under the clear Caruso CSI Miami riff; the favorite line is the one about entering the pageant without a face.
They should have kept filming those bits; Billy Baldwin gets a shout-out for being so game; a low-key funniest moment is the engineer telling Peter he has Allman Brothers tickets and hopes he isn't getting paid for the session; Animal Instincts is just stupid and just realistic enough, since the CBS drama Zoo arrived about eight years later.
The salary cap cast is unreal: Jonah Hill in about four scenes, Jack McBrayer, and Kristen Wiig in a deleted scene as the yoga instructor, to be discussed later.
