Comedy, played straight: the films of Judd Apatow are redefining comedy—but are women and gays in on the joke?

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FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL DIRECTED BY Nicholas Stoller STARRING Jason Segel, Mila Kunis, and Kristen Bell UNIVERSAL

JUDD APATOW IS FLYING HIGH. Not only has he directed enormous hit movies (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), but as a producer he's churning out films by his posse of actors, directors, and writers like Seth Rogen (Superbad, Drillbit Taylor), Nicholas Stoller, and Jason Segel (the latter two are director and writerstar, respectively, of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)

And yet, is there something in queer writer-director Mike White's assertion in The New York Times that Apatow's brand of comedy has become antigay and antiwoman; that it's begun "feeling like the comedy of the bullies, rather than the bullied"? White isn't just referring to the "You know how I know you're gay?" scene from Virgin but the steady shift in the overall tone of his former collaborator. Has Apatow--a man who began in television, illuminating the freaks and the geeks--now embraced the sort of resolutely heterosexual, schlub-winsshiksa comedy that's powered umpteen CBS sitcoms?

Though much has been made of the fact that Apatow's leading men are ordinary-looking slackers, his leading women are rarely allowed the same leeway (Knocked Up star Katherine Heigl noted that the film celebrated its men but painted its women as "shrews, as humorless and uptight"). In Forgetting Sarah Marshall the gender gap is even more noticeable. The films stars the bland, doughy Segel, but when his female costars, Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis, are in the frame, the lens is suddenly slathered in Vaseline, as though we might blanch at the sight of an imperfect woman.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that Apatow's films aren't antiwoman but afraid of women--or at least afraid of really understanding them. In fact, when Sarah Marshall begins, Segel's character, Peter, has been dating Sarah (Bell) for five years when she dumps him for possessing no more maturity around her than a 40-year-old virgin would. Bereft at her betrayal, he flies to Hawaii and falls for Kunis, a free-spirited hotel clerk whose chief source of appeal--besides that fogged-lens beauty--is that she demands nothing from him. Her most alluring moment isn't when she goes topless but when Segel attempts to buy her a drink and she shrugs him off, telling him she doesn't need to be doted on.

In many ways Sarah Marshall hews close to the formula established by Knocked Up and even retains most of its cast--including Segel, Paul Rudd, and Jonah Hill. But it's telling that there's no place in a movie like this for Leslie Mann, whose Knocked Up performance as Rudd's wife is still the closest thing in the Apatow oeuvre to a real, complicated woman. Handed a role that could have simply been "humorless and uptight," she delivered that film's most memorable performance, pivoting from funny to scary to vulnerable in every ad-libbed line. You wanted to see more of her because it felt like there was actually more to see--something that Sarah Marshall's Kunis either can't or isn't allowed to pull off. It's heartening that in real life, Apatow is married to Mann--now if he could only let her raucous spirit into more of his disciples' movies.

As for White's antigay charge, I disagree. Though gay guys don't appear in Apatow's films, the gay humor that does is relatively benign--after all, these men clearly prefer the company of other men. When Segel repeatedly drops his towel and shows us the full monty (trust me: Sarah Marshall's got more dick than an episode of Dante's Cove), we're prodded to laugh, but it's not just because Apatow and company are afraid of male sexuality--they're afraid of any sexuality at all. Will they ever set their giggling aside and venture into the sort of comedy that comes from actually getting laid--or dare I suggest, making love--something that might require a deeper understanding of what makes a woman tick? I think they can do it, but they might have to Mann up first.

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