Funny People | rated R (L,S) | starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen | written & directed by Judd Apatow | 2:26 mins
Famous comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is diagnosed with terminal cancer and takes on up-and-coming comic Ira (Seth Rogen) as his assistant, confessing to him his personal regrets now at the end of his life. As Ira gets a glimpse of the movie star lifestyle, George sets about to correct the mistakes of the past.
**Thematic Spoilers**
Nobody ever told Judd Apatow that brevity is the soul of wit. The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up both clocked in at 2 hours and over. His third film, Funny People is a sporadically funny dramedy that long, long overstays it’s welcome at 2 1/2 hours. It’s uneven, poorly paced and completely lacks focus. Where 40 Year Old and Knocked Up had a goal it moved toward (sex and birth), Funny wanders around aimlessly from one large set piece to the next. It appears Apatow can’t quite decide what story he wants to tell here: one of a student mentor relationship, one of professional comic jealousy, one of a man’s attempt at redemption. He ends up trying to tell them all, throwing everything and the kitchen sink into this brew as if to make the ultimate story of the life of a miserable Hollywood star.
He blows out his Hollywood black book, filling the film with famous Easter Egg cameos with everyone from Norm McDonald and Dave Attell to Andy Dick and James Taylor to a so bizarre it’s almost funny exchange between Ray Romano and Eminem. Apatow has a spit-wad approach to the film, throwing all sorts of stuff against the wall and hoping something will stick, it’s a testament to this that he has one of the most insightful speeches of the film given by, not any of the main characters, but Eminem in his cameo.
Apatow has never been a particularly good director. His talent, as with his TV shows, Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, has always been assembling a cast with electric chemistry, and through that creating characters so real they could pass for your friends. No surprises here as he goes back to the usual roster of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Leslie Mann. There are some laughs here – I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit there were quite a few – all from the banter between Rogen, Hill and Jason Schwartzman. Hill and Schwartzman are at their best and their scenes are preciously few and far between. Apatow seems to have forgotten what made 40 Year Old and Knocked Up work, which was to let the actors improvise and get out of their way. Instead he buys into his own hype for mixing pathos and vulgar frat-boy humor, cutting the riffing and burying it under a mountain of sentiment that takes forever to get to a point and jokes from comedians whose acts are 99% penis-centered. I see a Funny People drinking game in the future where you have to take a shot every time someone tells an unfunny, utterly nonsensical penis joke. If you can make it that far the movie even ends on this dud note.
I will say this about Funny People, it depicts Adam Sandler as I’ve always suspected him to be. A miserable, arrogant, jerk who laughed through pain, hating himself and his fans. The movie’s best moments are again in throw away jokes referencing George Simmon’s career of making bad family comedies not unlike Sandler. The movie also scores with Schwartmann’s dead-on bad NBC sitcom “Yo Teach”. It’s these moments of perfectly observed Hollywood satire that I’m shocked even passed through the studio system that makes Funny People’s ultimate collapse all the more painful. For every second we see a hilarious bit from “Re-Do” we get 30 minutes of Adam Sandler malaise or bad jokes from unfunny people. There is something about watching a movie where characters tell jokes, knowing how “funny” they are which makes it all the less funny.
It all quietly grinds to a halt for a lengthy climax at the home of George’s girl-that-got-away (Leslie Mann) as he tries to steal her away from her husband (Eric Bana, truly funny) and children (Apatow’s own), tagging Ira along for the ride. The set piece goes on for 2 days in film time and forever in filmstrip time. Any remaining air in the tires gets drained dry right here. Apatow seems to not know how, when or where to end it. What’s the point of it all? Apatow would probably say that life doesn’t wrap up nicely. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens. People don’t change, lessons aren’t learned, and he’d be right. He’d be espousing a philosophy I want to see in my movies. But if the point is the journey, I would expect the journey to not be as bleak and joyless as this one.
There is good stuff buried in bits and pieces here that if Apatow re-focused the film and elaborated on, Funny People could have been great. But instead of a sharp insightful Hollywood satire, he too often cowards back for just a glancing blow. Apatow takes the addage of writing what you know to an extreme here, making Funny a case of art imitating life that more resembles the proverbial snake eating it’s own tail. For me it marks the end of Apatow’s reign as the king of comedy.