by Greg Oguss
Being LA Snark’s resident Judd Apatow expert has had its ups and downs, much like the recent output of the Juddpack. My career as an Apatow Analyst began with a few hastily-written compliments strung into paragraph form for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, my very first review for the Snark. That effort played well enough to lead to a regular film-reviewing gig, “regular” meaning whenever I felt like paying to see a studio film or schlepping over to the West Side for an indie screening. One summer later, I was seriously slacking in my job, thoroughly bored by the Hollywood dreck and now jaded enough to resist the lure of free art-house screenings. Snark’s editor-in-chief talked me into giving the disappointing Pineapple Express the pan it richly deserved, instantly earning us the enmity of every web-savvy stoner in the Southland. Paying little heed to the stoner invective, I gave Paul Rudd a rave in the Apatow-influenced I Love You, Man and scribbled something about my preference for Apatow vs. Diablo Cody at another blog.
The Apatow canon is bloated with films on which he had various levels of involvement, including Anchorman, Walk Hard, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Drillbit Taylor, Step Brothers and Year One, to name a few. The last three (okay, I haven’t seen them but am confidently crowdsourcing my opinion to the multitude of disappointed bloggers) are about as related to Apatow’s auteur status as his script for the Dan Aykroyd turkey, Celtic Pride. Despite this prolific hit-and-miss output, Funny People is being advertised as “the third film” by the director, perhaps to bury the unpleasant aftertaste of all those post-Superbad, slap-dash writing and/or producing efforts.
The critics have been referring to Funny People as Apatow’s first “serious” film, his first “half-serious” one, and the one where he “graduates from high school to college.” Undoubtedly, it is his most personal film yet, opening with a decades-old home movie he once shot of its star, his then-unknown roommate Adam Sandler, and co-starring his wife, Leslie Mann, and his favorite on-screen alter ego, Seth Rogen. It is also the funniest film from the Juddpack since Superbad. What it has in common with Apatow’s best (the films he’s directed and the early Will Ferrell-Adam McKay collaborations) also distinguishes it from Knocked Up knock-offs like Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man. Those quickies aren’t really any lazier than the average comedy, but they tend to lack the heartfelt quality that prevents Apatow’s sex-obsessed Man-Boy losers from turning into cardboard punchline-machines.
The twenty-five words or less synopsis—an Adam Sandler vehicle about an Adam Sandler-ish comedian with a healthy dose of self-loathing and a terminal disease—makes Funny People sound like a much more mawkish affair than it is. After getting what appears to be a death sentence from his doctor, Sandler’s forty-ish mega-star George Simmons bullies his way into becoming mentor to Rogen’s Ira Wright neé Weiner, hiring the aspiring comic as a joke-writer and live-in go-fer at his ostentatious, ocean-side mansion. The only items on George’s bucket list are “start doing more stand-up” and smoothing things out with the “one that got away,” Leslie Mann’s Laura, a former actress turned Marin County homemaker. A few plot developments are fairly obvious—Ira getting George to reach out to friends and Laura potentially being the one that didn’t get away after all. The less predictable twist is George getting better while staying as self-centered as ever (he’s the only person who ever became a bigger asshole after a near-death experience, Ira shouts before George fires him).
Fans of Apatow’s profane, dialogue-driven humor aren’t especially concerned about how clichéd or original the plot may be, simply hoping the director will “bring the funny” for the full running time. Clocking in at a daunting 146 minutes, the movie is sorely in need of a few well-placed cuts, particularly during a third act featuring endless scenes of George and Ira entertaining Laura’s kids (played by Apatow and Mann’s own children). But up to and including the final fade-out, the proceeds are liberally spiked with belly laughs as the gifted cast trades an endless variety of pop culture name-checking jokes, dick-ball-fart jokes, masturbation jokes and grandpa-titty-fucking-grandma jokes. (As Rogen laughs in response to a press junket question about the ultimate joke, a bit about getting your dick to fart would obviously be “awesome.” “Tasty and awesome,” Sandler corrects him).
While anyone who’s seen Punch-Drunk Love knows Sandler is every bit the actor as Jim Carrey in his Man in the Moon phase, his assured portrayal of a middle-aged brat—with movie star grin replaced by a perpetual, age-lined scowl—will no doubt surprise some and turn off a few Bedtime Stories fans. Rogen’s sweet but confidence-deficient wannabe is a perfect foil for George’s ribbing, with Ira’s supposed dick size, overly Jew-y name, and lack of player skills subject to constant attack. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are on hand as Ira’s roommates, also undercutting his confidence with a stream of comic insults. Hill offers a canned, one-liner-happy performance as Leo, a more self-assured stand-up comic. Schwartzman’s Mark Taylor Jackson, an actor as self-absorbed as his name suggests, is most amusing during the scenes from his painfully unfunny sitcom, “Yo! Teach.”
All of the “wow, this is some bad comedy” parodies—another Apatow staple—are fresher here than in the quickies, particularly the elaborate spoofs of Adam Sandler movies, raising the question whether the actor was offended by how well his old friend mocked the unfunny work that made him as wealthy as George Simmons. While the parodies are done with obvious affection, it rings true when Laura’s loutish Aussie husband Clarke (a peripatetic but not especially funny Eric Dana) notes how strange it is that George’s movies aren’t funny but he is.
The non-stop gag lines and skillfully filmed stand-up sequences will keep the audiences from squirming, but the movie isn’t without flaws. A romance between Ira and Aubrey Plaza’s Daisy (a younger, funnier Janeane Garofalo) gets laughs but is never fleshed out. In a Northern California-set climax in which George’s presence and Ira’s meddling force a split between Laura and Clarke, the bromance-thin characters become noticeably less convincing. In contrast, scenes of George confronting his illness and hollow personal life are, for the most part, underplayed and even emotionally resonant. While the money and mega-fame may have turned George into a heartless bastard grinding out Hollywood pap, we can count ourselves lucky that, in spite of their own success, Sandler and Apatow can still bring the heart and the funny once in a while.
