Here's another late-posted Movie Match for you, this one written before Forgetting Sarah Marshall wound up getting beat at the box office by the forgettable-looking Forbidden Kingdom. If you haven't yet seen Sarah, I can't recommend it highly enough -- it definitely lives up to the hype, and will hopefully "have legs" at the box office like most of the other Judd Apatow-produced comedies have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: producer Judd Apatow may be the current king of R-rated Hollywood comedy, but if New England’s own Peter and Bobby Farrelly hadn’t paved the way, then critically acclaimed, crowd-pleasing yukfests like Superbad, Knocked Up, and this week’s seemingly destined-for-greatness Forgetting Sarah Marshall probably never would have happened.

I’ve got no beef with Apatow or the stable of up-and-coming film comedians – like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Sarah Marshall scribe/star Jason Segal – that have suddenly become mega-popular under his tutelage, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Farrellys, whose first three films (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary), proved beyond any doubt that genuine, old-fashioned romance could share the screen with gags involving body fluids, functions, etc. Those movies, in this fan’s humble opinion, also outdo everything put out thus far by the Apatow camp in terms of sheer laughs – and this is coming from a guy who hovered dangerously close to incontinence from chuckling so hard at Superbad (if only more films could truly be called pee-your-pants funny…).

Anywho, Sarah Marshall is already netting the expected critical raves, and if it isn’t a big hit I’ll definitely be surprised. One thing, though – for some reason, every time I see the trailer for this movie, I can’t help but be reminded of last year’s misbegotten Farrellys effort The Heartbreak Kid, another sweet/gross romantic comedy set mostly (like Sarah) at a tropical vacation resort. And, unfortunately, thinking of The Heartbreak Kid makes me a little heartbroken myself, since the movie received so little love from, well, everyone.

I’m not saying that Heartbreak was perfect in any way, but the little-seen, very-little-respected film marked the Farrellys’ return to the go-for-broke adult humor that made them a household name, and even reunited them with Mary star Ben Stiller. I had high hopes for the flick, and although it promised a lot more than it delivered, I think it’s still worth catching for anyone who enjoyed their early work.

A remake of a 1972 rom-com that starred Cybill Shepherd and Charles Grodin, Heartbreak stars Ben Stiller as forty-year-old Eddie, a longtime commitment-phobe who’s never found a woman he’d be comfortable settling down with. As luck or contrivance would have it, he soon “meets cute” (to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert) with an impossibly attractive and lovable environmental researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) and, after a whirlwind courtship, ends up marrying her and heading off to Mexico to honeymoon.

Unfortunately for Eddie, overnight – or rather, in the course of the newlyweds’ drive down to Cabo – Lila turns from dream girl to nightmare; he discovers in short order that his new bride is a debt-ridden former raging cokehead with a deviated septum and a string of skeevy ex-boyfriends, is dangerous as a rabid animal in the sack, has some particularly unsavory flatulence issues, and perhaps worst of all, is a huge Spice Girls fan. After she contracts the nastiest sunburn in cinema history on their first day of wedded bliss, Eddie ventures off on his own at the resort – where he meets the lovely and unattached Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’d be a perfect woman for him to settle down with had he not already tied the knot less than 48 hours earlier.

That’s a great plot for a comedy right there, and a perfect framework on which to hang the kind of gross-out humor that has become the Farrelly trademark. Unfortunately, the film is only partially successful at mining its potential, rendering this a subpar Farrelly outing at best. Still, there’s plenty to laugh at here, from Eddie’s pervy septaugenarian father – played, of course, by Jerry Stiller – to an interlude in a pastoral Mexican village where Stiller and Monaghan pet some friendly rodents and enjoy a “Mexican Folklore Dance” that is far less culturally stimulating than it sounds.

Stiller essentially plays the same character he’s been riffing on since Mary and Flirting With Disaster, but his female co-stars really pick up the slack – Monaghan, as in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pulls off the idealized dream-girl schtick pretty damn well, and Akerman deserves credit for being one of the most abrasive and unbearable characters I’ve ever seen in a comedy. I’m sure she’s a swell person in real life, and I look forward to seeing her in the long-awaited upcoming Watchmen movie, but based on her convincing work here I’ll bet the poor woman couldn’t get a date for months after the movie’s release (maybe in that respect it’s a good thing that this failed at the box office).

I can’t stand by this movie quite as enthusiastically as most of the others I’ve written about in this column, but with so many comedies lately seemingly getting by without a single well-executed gag, I can honestly say that The Heartbreak Kid made me laugh out loud enough times to win me over. It may not make you forget Sarah Marshall, but it’s definitely worth a look.