Funny People
– Two stars (out of four)
– Rated R for language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality.
– Who is going to like it: stand-up comedians and die-hard Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen fans, the ones too stubborn to admit that Observe and Report was awful
Apatow strikes out
Like most, I lost my Judd Apatow (writer/director/producer) virginity with his motion picture directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Virgin. All it took for me to become a fan of his work was The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I still give that movie credit (over Wedding Crashers) as being the funniest movie of 2005.
Apatow returned to the big screen with great success in 2007 with Knocked Up – which he also wrote, directed and produced. While Knocked Up still contained the extremely 
vulgar comedic style of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, he tried upping the maturity of the film’s story by delving into (supposed) heavy, real-life scenarios. (Sorry, I just don’t find a sub-plot about a wife freaking out more over her husband sneaking off to fantasy football parties than fidelity feasible subject matter). Personally, I thought it was a failed attempt. The overall feeling I got from the film was overly childish. I felt like I watched a movie written by a perverted teenage kid with a lack of self-esteem who wrote a fantasy about himself, an over-weight central character, knocking up one of the prettiest girls in Hollywood. It was shallow – not that The 40-Year-Old Virgin wasn’t, but it didn’t try to be anything more.
With Funny People, his third attempt at writing, directing and producing, Apatow has given the impression that – just like M. Night Shyamalan – maybe he shouldn’t have full control over his own personal projects. Funny People is a train wreck.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Funny People, then you’ve seen the entire movie. The trailer shows absolutely everything that 
happens all the way up until the final ten minutes of the movie. George Simmons (Adam Sandler) has cancer. After a long stint at making family flicks, he decides to spend the final years of his life returning to his roots – stand-up comedy. His first night back, George meets Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) – an new comic playing the same gig. After Ira’s set (that brutally ripped on George), for some reason unknown to me, George hires Ira to become his joke-writing assistant. The two team up like an ’80s buddy flick. George overcomes his cancer and becomes a virtual homewrecker, aggressively going after “the one who got away,” Laura (Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann), now-married-with-two-kids. The one thing that the trailer does not give away is what happens with George and Laura.
I don’t personally know Judd Apatow, but I can tell you from watching Funny People that he is one egotistical, 
self-involved and over-indulgent filmmaker. He doesn’t know when and what to cut. For one, Funny People is nearly two-and-a-half hours long, which is long for any movie, let alone a comedy. Secondly, I feel like he cut out more plot-related scenes than he did comedic ones. For example: when George tells Ira that he is dying from cancer, Ira is shocked to learn that George hasn’t told a single person. George explains that he doesn’t want anybody to know. A few scenes later, George is being visited by old comedy buddies who talk to him about it. Laura, who refused to see or talk to him earlier in the movie, shows up to his mansion and talks with him about it. Instead of having so many mediocre stand-up comedy scenes, I would’ve liked to see the scene where George comes out, tells the world and his family that he has cancer, then get into the scenes. Instead of paying attention to their conversations, I was distracted wondering how in the world they even knew he had cancer in the first place.
Though I only give you that one example along those lines, there were several major plot points that caused this same distracting confusion throughout the whole movie. Because there are so many unnecessary stand-up routines in the first half of the movie (which, by-the-way, aren’t very funny – I’ve seen better comedy from the local comics at Wiseguy’s here in SLC), I can’t understand why he’d cut the scenes that are needed to further the story. The result of his cutting takes you out of the movie – which is something that makes an already-long movie feel even longer – and leaves lots of holes.
Another unnecessary tool that Apatow uses is a fleet of side characters and cameos that have absolutely nothing to do with furthering the story. If anything, all they do is add more cluster to this already-clustered showcase. Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, the RZA, Aziz Ansari, James Taylor, Andy Dick, George Wallace, Norm MacDonald, Dave Attell, Sarah Silverman, Eminem, Ray Romano, Justin Long, and Apatow’s own daughters, Maude and Iris, all make substancial appearances. And all are one hundred percent unnecessary.
On the radio this morning, co-host Carlie Cash asked me if this was a movie that I or others cried in. That made me realize something. I’ll guarantee you that Apatow set out to make that a goal in Funny People. To answer that question, no. And I don’t think anybody will. Any time the films carries itself to a darker, more serious level, instead of sticking with it, there’s a joke. And usually not a funny one. Jokes in the middle of serious scenes give off the impression of apologizing for the darkness. Funny People has an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what to be – a funny drama or a serious comedy. You might consider the label “dark comedy,” but just because a movie that makes you laugh gets dark doesn’t imply it’s a dark comedy.
Adam Sandler has now done several dark characters: Charlie in Reign Over Me, John in Spanglish, Barry in Punch-Drunk Love. He can brilliantly pull off great, serious, dark performances. Except in Funny People. Here he stinks. I blame Apatow. After seeing three of his movies now, I’ve realized that he doesn’t direct his actors. He lets them do what they want, just like the studio lets him do what he wants. That’s why Seth Rogen always plays the same character. The actors that have given great performances in his flicks have done so because that’s who they are. I honestly don’t think he gives them much direction at all.
By now, you know how I feel about Funny People. It lacks… everything. Character. Heart. Charm. And even laughs. And it shouldn’t. It has no excuse. And I don’t mean to be so brutal towards Apatow himself; I’m sure he plays everything really close to the chest. These films are his babies. But he needs help along the way. He’s done great in the past and I’m sure he’ll do it again. But for now, he should return to producing. He has produced just about every funny movie in the last four years (Pineapple Express, Step Brothers, Walk Hard, Drillbit Taylor, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Superbad, Talladega Nights). I’m sure he’ll get there again. He just can’t do it alone. Funny People proves that.
Photo credit: Universal Pictures
