Many romantic comedies tell a story of two lovers who, as Hollywood formula demands, should be together but can’t seem to hook up. None, to my recollection, specifically depicts the difficulty of forgetting someone one shouldn’t be with. Film aficionados, I’m sure, will come up with examples that I’ve overlooked, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the first film directed by comedy writer Nicholas Stoller and produced by Judd Apatow (who directed and cowrote The 40-Year-Old Virgin and wrote and directed Knocked Up), handles this problem in a manner original and humorous.

Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is a musician who dubs the soundtrack of a hit TV series about a detective that stars his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). Like thousands of Sarah’s fans, Peter adores her. One day, Sarah comes home early from a shoot and, as she tells Bretter that she loves him, he knows he is about to get dumped. During a fit of crying (his), Peter discovers that Sarah has met someone else and wants to move on -- and she does.

Peter then embarks on a series of one-night stands, but no one seems able to help him forget Sarah -- a task made even harder by his continuing to provide the music for her show. One day, while dubbing music for an episode, Peter has a breakdown and realizes that he must do something or he will lose everything. Taking the advice of his brother, Brian (Bill Hader), Bretter goes on vacation alone to get away from it all.

At the Turtle Bay Resort, in Hawaii -- a spa that Sarah had always talked about -- Peter finds that Sarah is already there with her new boyfriend, British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). A front-desk employee, Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis), senses that she’s witnessing an embarrassing moment as the lovesick Peter discovers the couple. Rachel books Peter a posh suite at no cost, then sets out to help him forget his old girlfriend.

From here, the rest of the story would appear to be formulaic: Sarah will be revealed as shallow and uncaring, Aldous Snow as a loser, and Peter will fall for the more deserving Rachel. But thanks to the original script by Jason Segel (who plays Peter), it doesn’t quite happen that way. Aldous turns out to have charms of his own, and we realize that Sarah may have had some good reasons for dumping Peter, who has a way of screwing up a good thing.

Aldous Snow is a breakout role for Russell Brand, who does a great job of sending up foppish British rock stars, stealing almost every scene he’s in. Aldous is a cool, likable guy whose bed-hopping ways are almost forgivable -- he hasn’t a malicious bone in his body.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- the first successful romantic comedy of 2008 -- has many witty lines. The dialogue is fresh, and I laughed often. However, it’s uneven, without much flow, and more closely resembles a series of vignettes -- many of them quite funny -- that have been pieced together but don’t carry the story forward.

While Segel has done a good job on the screenplay, as an actor he’s not particularly strong, though he appears in some nude scenes that most actors would shy away from. Fortunately, producer Judd Apatow has surrounded him with actors and well-known faces from previously successful Apatow comedies, including Bill Hader, Jonah Hill as an annoying waiter named Michael, and Paul Rudd as a brain-dead surfer dude.

Despite its problems, Forgetting Sarah Marshall has enough laughs and memorable scenes for me to give it a positive recommendation. It’s original, and these days originality is in short supply.

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