Funny People

Considering Judd Apatow's previous work most people will probably see Funny People expecting a comedy.This isn't the case at all. The film is clearly a drama even though it centers around stand up comedy.George (Adam Slander) is a very successful, famous and rich comedian who learns that he has a blood disorder similar to leukemia and he'll most likely die in a short amount of time. Ira (Seth Rogen) is a struggling up-and-coming stand up comedian who works at a deli.One night George takes notice of Ira and hires him as his personal assistant. Ira gets exited with this new chance and accepts it right away.Besides being an assistant Ira soon becomes George's only friend. Later on the experimental medicine that was given to George by the doctors ends up working and George defeats the disease. With a second chance in life, George tries to reconnect with the love of his life and takes Ira along for the ride. Both of them end up learning some lessons. This is not a bad film, and I think the premise is great, the problem here is that the movie is very,very uneven.The direction of the film changes a few times, sometimes it feels like its going on the right direction and sometimes it just falls flat.As I said, this is more a drama then a comedy, but the writing is what you usually see in the late genre; the characters are two dimensional and poorly written, specially the main character George who towards the end of the movie seems like a completely different person. The acting was a big problem for me as well. Seth Rogen's acting here, lets be honest, it is atrocious, he doesn't seem comfortable at all and delivers his lines in a very awkward way (and I didn't mind him at all in Zack And Miri Make A Porno for instance) and Eric Bana has a serious case of overacting. All in all, it's a very uneven film but entertaining nonetheless and a good change of pace for Adam Sandler.

6/10

In the current climate of contemporary comedy, Judd Apatow is king. And while he makes a killing producing, his real talent is displayed through his writing and directing abilities. While Knocked Up does not hold up cohesively on repeat viewings, The 40-Year-Old Virgin remains one of the funniest comedies of the decade. While both films dabbled with the hybrid mixture of comedy and drama, both were comedies first and foremost. Enter his latest foray of writing/directing, and a film I clamoured for advance tickets for: Funny People.

George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is an aging comedian, hating the cards God has dealt him. He has no friends, his career is washed up, and almost immediately after the film starts, is diagnosed with a terminal inoperable disease. Shortly after he begins taking experimental medication, he meets Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a struggling young comedian trying to live up to his roommates, fellow comedian Leo (Jonah Hill) and sitcom star Mark (Jason Schwartzman). With his life slowly fading, George hires Ira on as his assistant to write jokes for him, and begins to try and make something of his life before it ends.

While it sounds more like a drama than a comedy, Funny People does pack in the laugh-out-loud moments Apatow comedies are known for. While a lot of it looks like it continues the grand tradition of being improvised (with whole scenes dedicated to stand-up comedy routines), there is a great deal that appears to have been written by Apatow himself. Almost every joke kills because of how genuinely funny and outrageous there are. While the gross out humour appears at a minimum here, the graphic content discussed within the dialogue continues to be as uniquely entertaining as it always has been. I found myself gasping for air at more than a handful of comments these characters make to each other; they are just that funny.

But a lot of the laughs come few and far between what is actually going on within this overly ambitious drama. And unfortunately, it is one of the few things holding the film together.

It is clear from the start of the film, featuring old footage of Sandler as an aspiring comedian, that this tale is very special to Apatow. But his desire to tell this story on his terms, while aspiring to pay homage to his past and present as a comedian and filmmaker, seems to come in the way of the film itself. Scenes tend to go on and on for no purpose at all, and whole scenes seem to have been added to give greater depth for some characters, but end up being entirely superfluous and useless. Apatow is well known for having movies that tend to be 20-minutes too long. But with Funny People, he seems to break his own rule and drag the film out 40-60 minutes longer than it needs to be. The entire final act of the film is downright agonizing for how dragged out it comes off, and how ill-paced it becomes as it stretches on. I found myself checking my watch just hoping it would end sooner rather than later. At 145 minutes, this just seems like overkill. There is no reason this movie ever should have been released as being less than ten minutes shorter than films like The Dark Knight or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

But the key detractor from the film is its tone and consistency. It never seems to be able to balance itself out as a comedy/drama like Virgin and Knocked Up did. Apatow does not let the film gradually let one tone win out over the other; he just crams scenes filled with both elements almost absentmindedly. In one single scene, the film can go from hilarious, to sad, to hysterically funny, to downright depressing in less than five minutes. After years of being part of film crews in some capacity (either as writer, director or producer), you would imagine something as amateur as this would be totally out of the question for Apatow. Surely this sloppy brand of film-making is better suited for an earlier project, as opposed to what should be a crowning achievement in a continually blossoming career?

While the story and pacing is all over the place, the acting fares a little better. Sandler, playing a popular comedian much like himself, delivers a devastatingly excellent performance as Simmons. It seems that playing a character that is so closely similar to his actual career was just what Sandler needed to prove he has not completely squandered away that promising talent he once had. The visual expressions on his face, through pain and sorrow, are almost enough to forgive him for travesties like You Don't Mess with the Zohan and Click. This is a very adult Sandler playing a role more mature than he has ever had before, and he gives some of his best work to date within it. Rogen delivers a fairly well done performance as well, but seems almost deflated in some scenes. He gave his all in films like Knocked Up and Observe and Report, but here he just seems dialed down. Almost like he wants Sandler to overshadow him completely.

The supporting cast, from Schwartzman and Hill to Leslie Mann, newcomer Aubrey Plaza and a surprisingly hilarious Eric Bana, all give great performances, but nothing extraordinary. It was interesting to see Mann in a dramatic role, and while she is imperfect, she does well anyway. The film packs plenty of hilarious cameos too, some of which are just too good to spoil.

Funny People is just fabulous when it wants to be. But for the most part, it truly is a disappointing effort on Apatow's part. It is far too ambitious a project, and just muddled with tonal issues that it just never accomplishes what it sets out for. Which is a shame.

6.5/10.

One of the major rules people should have learned about movies is this: No matter how specific the title is, it may not be what you thought it was going in.

Judd Apatow had two previous titles, both being specific in title, with "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up". So when you see a movie with a title like "Funny People", you will probably expect a very funny movie; This wouldn't be necessarily incorrect, but misleading: There are funny people in this movie, it is just not a movie that is truly as funny as the title would lead you to believe.

Adam Sandler as George is surely the highlight of this movie, We think we will see Adam playing a serious role, and for the most part, he does. His character, dying from a rare blood disease, is brought up almost immediately, so the movie moves right away.

George decides to go back to the stage after making a handful of truly bad movies (An obvious look back at Adam's acting career) and bombs on stage, but Ira, played by Seth Rogen in a different kind of role, gets some big laughs. George hires Ira to help him write jokes, and a different kind of friendship, but a friendship nonetheless, develops.

George soon gets into touch with an old girlfriend, played by Leslie Mann, Director Apatow's Wife, and the two begin to realize how much they have both changed. She has a husband (Eric Bana, in a truly funny role) and two kids (Iris and Maude, Mann and Apatow's real life children), while George lives a life less fulfilling.

The movie takes a real backseat to conventional rules of movies; There is maybe, at a maximum, of two real clichés in this movie, one mentioned in this review already, and the other for good measure.

The movie feels a little long winded, running at nearly 2 and half hours, and the characters are sad, but interesting. Seeing Adam playing a shadow of himself is certainly a depressing site, and Rogen doing all he can for the man that he admires, since he was a kid, no less, is even better, proving that Rogen isn't a one trick pony, hopefully making this a bit more noticeable for his performance in The Green Hornet next year.

The movie also has some great performances from Jason Schwartzman as an actor starring in a horrible television sitcom and Jonah Hill as a competing comedy performer.

But there has to be a reason why this movie is ranked so low, and it could almost be said of the running time, but its coming right back to my first paragraph about ironic titles in movies. I suspected a laugh riot, and got mere chuckles. The stand up is hard to enjoy, being very oriented in genitalia humor and sex jokes doesn't make it really funny, just repetitive.

And I will be honest: I didn't pay attention to the title business and felt rather disappointed. This is a movie not sitting at the dinner table with all the Apatow produced movies of the last three or four years; like George, he's sitting at his own table, not quite like everyone else.

Perhaps now that I've seen the movie for what it truly is, a drama with some funny parts in it, I can now go back and see if maybe I can look at it any differently.

Here is an Apatow film different from anything he's directed, written or produced lately, and deserves to be seen at least once, and while people will see this and perhaps, not laugh as hard, here is hoping Apatow doesn't lose face and give up on this kind of writing. Apatow can make characters more like real people, and he needs to consider maybe doing a drama a little more than once or twice, now that he has done it. If he doesn't, he might end up like most writer-directors, who just get tired after awhile, instead of trying out different genres of film, regardless of what his "Fans" might say anyway.

7 out of 10.

I watched this around the time it first became available to rent. It was very forgettable at the time. I watched it thinking it was going to be "funny." But 12 years later it's more relatable to me and understandable, so the humor stands out a lot more than I remember.

Ira (Seth Rogen) is a struggling comic working at a sub shop. George (Adam Sandler) is a famous comedian and movie star who finds out that he's got a rare form of leukemia and won't live much longer, he's put on experimental medicine to try to combat the illness. This revelation rocks George's life. He's made tons of money and has plenty of people to suck up to him, but that just isn't enough. His world is falling down around him, all the mistakes he made have come back to haunt him. He tries to reconnect with the only girl he ever loved, Laura (Leslie Mann) and she doesn't want to talk to him until he tells her that he's sick. That plot line took up far too much of the movie.

George and Ira meet when George goes to one of the old comedy clubs he used to do stand up at and stands on stage without any material, talking about how he knows he's bombing when he can hear people in the audience cough. George ends up hiring Ira as his assistant and their odd friendship/work relationship begins. Ira has always been a big fan of George and is spellbound by the limos, private planes, and the women George has gotten so used to.

Their relationship is at sometimes interesting, I'm not sure where Judd Apatow (the director) meant to go with this picture, he seems to get a little bit of everything, not enough of the good and too much time spent on the bad. Ira likes one of his neighbors, Daisy "Aubrey Plaza" and that was a fun relationship that the movie really neglected. By the end, it felt very underdeveloped. Most of the dialog feels improvised and very clunky. Judd Apatow was trying to convey something here that he just couldn't in the end.

For what does work, this movie deserves a 6/10 rating. It's a dramedy, anyone looking for one or the other will likely be disappointed.