Boys And Their Toys | Adam Sandler and Leslie Mann turn down Seth Rogen’s offer of a ride home in Funny People.
FUNNY PEOPLE
Written and directed by Judd Apatow. Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana. Now playing.
****
Funny People is the third film written and directed by Judd Apatow, but in the past few years he’s leant his name to well over a dozen other films — some great, some okay, some unspeakably awful. After many years as a producer on seminal TV programs like The Larry Sanders Show and Freaks and Geeks, the 41-year-old Apatow has become the unlikely prince of Hollywood comedy, and at the same time draws hot-blooded critiques for his combination of male emotional bonding and dick jokes.
The Apatow brand may be reaching its saturation point, but as his new film proclaims loud and clear, the talents of the man himself are as strong and vibrant as ever. Like Apatow’s earlier films (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), Funny People is almost effortlessly charming, well-crafted, and wonderfully big-hearted.
Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a film actor looking back on a career of lucrative but not necessarily satisfying career choices. Adorning his spacious mansion are posters for tripe like My Best Friend Is a Robot and Re-Do, where he plays an infant with an adult’s head (apparently a genie is involved). In a hilarious later clip, we see George stuffing his face at a hot dog eating contest, where it cuts to his son in the crowd, full of emotion, yelling, “This won’t bring Mom back!”
George’s introspection comes from a very real place: he’s just been diagnosed with a rare and almost certainly fatal form of leukemia. So he decides to step out of his isolated shell and return to the stand-up comedy circuit, where he comes across Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a focused but struggling up-and-comer. Seeing the chance to both make a connection and take on a comedic protégé, George hires Ira to write some jokes for him, eventually taking him under his wing full-time as an assistant.
Despite its title, Funny People is much heavier than both of Apatow’s previous works. The jokes-per-minute ratio is probably about the same, but there’s always something ominous floating just beneath the surface. Ira’s quick banter with his more successful showbiz roommates (Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman) barely disguises his fear that he’s about to be left behind; George’s smirks look downright painful.
A lot depends on the interplay between George and Ira, and Sandler and Rogen make a surprisingly capable pair. Rogen turns out another intensely likable performance — though shaking up his familiar eager-to-please personality a little wouldn’t have hurt — but it’s Sandler who really dazzles. He nails George’s essential blankness, his inability to derive even the smallest amount of pleasure from making the people around him laugh. It’s a powerful role that winds up being as much a self-reflexive commentary about Sandler’s own uneven career as it is George’s. In that way, it’s oddly reminiscent of Mickey Rourke’s bravura performance last year in The Wrestler.
At nearly two and a half hours, the film is pretty obviously too long, though it’s hard to say exactly which parts should have gotten cut. There are lengthy subplots involving Schwartzman’s breakout role on an NBC sitcom called Yo Teach!, a mousy female comic (Aubrey Plaza) Ira fawns over from afar, and George’s ill-advised attempts to win back his ex-wife (Leslie Mann), who now lives in suburbia with a slick but oafish Australian (Eric Bana). The first two of these are far from essential to the film’s overall momentum, but they’re each so fun that it’d be a shame for them to end up as mere DVD extras.
But then again, I’m a big fan of nearly everything Apatow has had an active hand in. I’ve never been sympathetic to the claim that he’s a latent misogynist, or that his films all follow the same basic dude blueprint. To say that his female characters suffer in comparison to the men is only to say that he writes some of the sharpest and most perceptive male dialogue you’ll find anywhere today, in any medium. He’s not afraid to put real emotions on the line, and he knows a good dick joke when he sees it. Yes, Judd Apatow is undoubtedly a force for good.
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