In Funny People, George (Adam Sandler) is a very successful stand up comedian who learns that he has an untreatable blood disorder and is given less than a year to live. Ira (Seth Rogen) is a struggling up-and-coming stand up comedian who works at a deli and has yet to figure out his onstage persona. One night, these two perform at the same club and George takes notice of Ira. George hires Ira to be his semi-personal assistant as well as his friend.
Over the past few years, writer/director Judd Apatow has shown that nothing, not even losing your virginity or the miracle of childbirth is sacred. About his third film behind the camera, he says, "I'm trying to make a very serious movie that is twice as funny as my other movies. Wish me luck!" Apatow directs Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann in Funny People, the story of a famous comedian who has a near-death experience. Funny People is about individuals -- mostly young, physically unprepossessing, Jewish, horndoggy guys -- who try to make a living being funny. The film is outstanding at observing the interplay and competitiveness among three roommates: Leo (Jonah Hill), a tubby and belligerent performer and writer; Mark (Jason Schwartzman), the painfully self-serious star of a lame TV comedy; and Ira (a now entirely slimmed-down Seth Rogen), an aspiring standup whose life and career take major turns when he starts writing material for George. Like their mostly below-the-belt stage monologues, the guys' conversation is largely rude and crude. Ira, who takes no end of abuse from George about the fact that he changed his last name from Weiner, never gets anyone in the sack and becomes irate when an offbeat scenester girl he likes, Daisy (Aubrey Plaza), casually gets it on with Mark. George lives in an extraordinary mansion above the Pacific and invites Ira into his life up to a point. Frank about the perks of stardom where women are concerned, he is similarly blunt about other aspects of his life. "I used to be excited," he confesses, a mountain of unread scripts piled on his countertop, later adding that someone like him has plenty of people to hang out with but no real friends. The picture bobs along very nicely for 85 minutes or so, engaging smiles and interest with its behind-the-scenes looks at the comedy club culture, the bull sessions that produce new material, the way comics test themselves and each other, their sensitivities and jealousies. When George gets some unexpectedly positive medical news, he celebrates with pals at the Palm, occasioning some amusing cameos from Paul Reiser, Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano and Eminem, among others. But there's still nearly an hour to go, most of which leaves the L.A. comedy scene behind in favor of the Marin County manse of George's old flame Laura (Leslie Mann), a former starlet now married with two daughters. In San Francisco for a shared gig with Ira, George allows what was intended as a social call to develop into something more and ultimately becomes embroiled not only with Laura's daughters (Apatow and Mann's very cute lil girls, Maude and Iris) but with her volatile Australian husband, Clarke (Eric Bana). While it has its moments, this long latter stretch drains the picture of what little momentum it had and switches the focus to Laura and her own marital problems, which are annoying and not entirely convincing. Beset with persistent disappointment over a thwarted career while living in paradise with lovely kids and a hunky, if errant, mate, she's just not an interesting or even very tolerable character, her behavior stemming entirely from confusion, panic and emotional impulse. Mann hits all the surface notes, but never reveals anything beneath the manic surface.
While the film ends up as a grab bag of impressions rather than a fully realized work, there's plenty to savor, beginning with Sandler's performance. Pic opens with some homemade videos Apatow took of his former roommate making prank calls when they were both aspiring unknowns, and samplings of Sandler's subsequent early standup work and parodies of the star's lowbrow comedies both honor and poke fun at the performer's achievements. But the many insights into everything from the man's arrogance to his self-derision make you feel you're getting something real here, and Sandler's gruff, offhand manner combines with his comic alertness to very good effect. Playing a frustrated fellow who never knows if his boss is going to praise him or bite his head off, Rogen makes for a fine foil in a performance that, like most of the film, avoids easy shtick. The comic thesps are completely at home in the milieu, while the generally hidden Australian in Bana is exuberantly unleashed here. Judd Apatow's previous movies have been laugh out loud funny. I'm not saying that this isn't, but it has the right balance of hilarity as well as character driven drama. Sandler is known for his over the top comedy, but he has done very few dramatic roles and here he seems to fit right at home almost seemingly playing himself in Funny People. Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens. Adam Sandler's central performance as some version of himself is notable for its revelation of callowness and ambivalent self-regard, which will fascinate some fans and turn off others. Curiosity should spur a healthy opening, with likely widely divergent reactions suggesting questionable staying power. Although Apatow's name seems to have been on the majority of the comedies made in the past four years, Universal is pushing the auteur angle by stressing that this is just his third film as a director. After the raunchy antics of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," he's gone half-serious here, serving up Sandler's fictional equivalent, George Simmons, as a 40ish comic superstar who learns he has a rare and possibly fatal disease. The good thing about Apatow is that he continues to demonstrate that as a genre comedy can deal with the most serious and sacred taboos in society, such as middle-aged male virginity ("40-Year-Old Virgin") unwanted pregnancy from a female POV ("Knocked-Up"), and now the traumatic experience of illness and death (or near-death) and their impact on changing lives in radical mode. It's the execution, or putting these ideas to practice in film that is comedic in format, which is problematic. At the end of this overlong picture, which gets disappointingly and increasingly more sentimental, we are left with the questions of was the director too close to his material, too enamored of the jokes to cut some of them out, too interested in writing a substantial part for his wife, whose sequences are the weakest, and the least funny in the picture. Funny People strikes me as a movie that was more fun to make, due to the improvs and chemistry between top-notch actors (all eccentric), than to watch as spectators. It's a movie in which the process must have been more interesting than the end result. This gets a 3 on my "Go See" scale.
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