Review: Funny People (2009)

[Jonathan Moya]

Funny People
(2009)

A Movie Review
By
Jonathan Moya

2.5 Out of 5 Stars or C+

The Plot: (from Allmovie.com)

Judd Apatow casts his former real-life roommate Adam Sandler as George
Simmons, a comic superstar who learns in the movie's opening scene
that he suffers from a rare blood disorder that will likely kill him
within a year. This news gives him the impulse to go back out and work
on his standup, something he hasn't done in years thanks to the
massive success of his movie career. At a club, he meets struggling
standup Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), takes a shine to him, and hires the
young man both to write jokes and to be his personal assistant. Ira,
who's been sleeping on a friend's pull-out couch and working a day job
at a deli, enjoys the glimpse into the superstar lifestyle, but soon
the protégé discovers how selfish and egocentric his mentor really is.

The Review:

Critics have been calling Judd Apatow's latest comedy Funny People his
most mature work.   Whenever I hear the words "mature" and "comedy" in
the same sentence, I just dread the filmic result.    Critics (this
one included) spend most of their lives in the dark, watching movies
and eating popcorn and writing about their obsession.   The good ones
don't have a social life and haven't had one since High School.    So
mature to them is a character that is lonely, obsessed and lives his
life metaphorically in the dark.   It is easy for them to fall into
the trap Apatow has set.

Adam Sandler's George Simmons is a cliché dressed in seeming
autobiography.   The world sees the comic as lonely, someone who lives
for and can only connect with an audience, someone who can't live or
see beyond the next joke and laugh-- Lenny (about Lenny Bruce), Jo Jo
Dancer, Your Life is Calling (Richard Pryor) and Punchline  with Tom
Hanks all played the pagliacci facade with a straight face.
Sandler's Simmons is likewise straight man to his painful miserable
existence.  Simmons traded edgy standup for the movie stardom of
infantile comedies.   Redo is George's head grafted onto a baby's
body.   The Mer-man has him neutered with a fishy appendage.  The
lonely George treads his palatial estate playing video games and
trying to get that standup edge back with ghost written punch lines at
second-rate comedy clubs.

Apatow even throws in a disease/cure of the week to give George,
essentially a walking orifice, a bit of sympathy via regretful self-
correction.  Simmons chases Laura (played by Apatow life mate Leslie
Mann), the woman who got away, now married with two children (the two
Apatow kids Iris and Maude).  The Punchline:  George Simmons wants
change without really wanting to change himself.   In a Hollywood
comedy, that equals failure-- romantic and bromantic.  Even his only
friend, and chief gag writer, Ira (Seth Rogen) ditches him when the
sarcasm gets too honest.  "You're my best friend, and I don't even
like you," George tells Ira.

Funny People is off kilter and out of rhythm probably by design.   It
is after all a movie about comics finding their timing and their
stride in life.  Apatow, like any good writer, is just trying to make
it seem real-- make it adhere structurally and thematically.

But the bromance loses itself in the romance.   Ira is really the only
one who knows, loves and has the patience to put up with George.  The
friendship and the movie finds its proper rhythm and place only at the
end.  Perhaps Apatow should have listened more to his own friendly
instincts, maybe been less loyal and generous to his long time friend
Sandler, and made Funny People Ira's story.  It might have worked.
Funny People gets a C+.

The Credits:   (From AllMovie.com)

Judd Apatow  - Director / Producer / Screenwriter Barry Mendel  -
Producer Clayton Townsend  - Producer Janusz Kaminski  -
Cinematographer Michael Andrews  - Composer (Music Score) Jonathan
Karp  - Musical Direction/Supervision Jason Schwartzman  - Composer
(Music Score) Craig Alpert  - Editor Brent White  - Editor Jefferson
Sage  - Production Designer James F. Truesdale  - Art Director Andrew
Jay Cohen  - Co-producer Brendan O'Brien  - Co-producer Jack
Giarraputo  - Executive Producer Evan Goldberg  - Executive Producer
Seth Rogen  - Executive Producer Betsy Heimann  - Costume Designer
Nancy Steiner  - Costume Designer

With  Adam Sandler  - George Simmons Seth Rogen  - Ira Wright Leslie
Mann  - Laura Eric Bana  - Clarke Jonah Hill  - Leo Koenig Jason
Schwartzman  - Mark Taylor Jackson Aubrey Plaza  - Daisy Danby RZA  -
Chuck Iris Apatow  - Ingrid Maude Apatow  - Mabel Torsten Voges  - Dr.
Lars Allan Wasserman  - Dr. Stevens Aziz Ansari  - Randy

Copyright 2009 by Jonathan Moya

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