Director: Judd Apatow
Starring: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen & Leslie Mann
An enjoyable film and Judd Apatow’s most mature effort to date raising the drama to balance out the humour and for the first half it mostly successful, but at almost 2 & ½ hours, Funny People loses its way some in the second half, detracting from the film’s overall success.
Making a career out writing and directing television and films that exploits humour from situations relating to his own life, Judd Apatow has covered high school (TV’s Freaks & Geeks), university (Undeclared), sex (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and parenthood (Knocked Up) and has also frequently employed his own friends to perform and launching the careers of actors such as Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Segal. Apatow is now a big name in comedy and so his latest film, Funny People, deals in part with celebrity and comedy but also confronts feelings upon death. The result is a film that feels very personal, manages to be very funny and demonstrates a lot more maturity than has been seen yet in an Apatow production however the film is also somewhat flawed with Apatow trying to cover too much leaving the second half of the film a little directionless and overlong.
George Simmons (Sandler) is a successful comedian. Having left the stand up circuit and now a famous film star, he is slowly coming to realise his life has not been that great since he found success and that he has very few people in his life that care about when he is confronted with the news that he has a fatal illness. When choosing to vent his frustrations in a surprise stand up performance he meets Ira Wright (Rogen), a struggling stand up comedian whose routine hasn’t taken off like those of his housemates Leo (Jonah Hill) and Mark (Jason Schwartzman). George however reaches out to Ira, initially hiring him to write him jokes for future routines before confiding in Ira that he is dying. Encouraged to reconnect with old friends and family, George finds his feelings rekindled for his ex-fiancé Laura (Mann) which only increases when he receives news that he may be recovering but desire to reconnect with Laura and his relationship with Ira are both threatened by the fact that Laura is now married with children and George still isn’t that nice a person anymore.
Having been college roommates with Adam Sandler in his youth, using actual home videos of the two together from that period to start the film, looking back at their beginnings, and having Sandler star in Funny People gives Apatow’s new film a feeling of being more true to life than any of Apatow’s previous films. The main character of George, being a stand up comedian turned successful movie star starring in many commercial if immature movies almost gives the feeling that George’s story could actually be Sandler’s (almost mocking some of Sandler’s own efforts and those of similar comedy stars such as Eddie Murphy who have moved towards duller, more non-threatening material). Meanwhile Ira’s story somewhat mimics Rogen’s life as an amateur comedian who is taken under the wing of someone more successful (as Rogen has found in Apatow) and finds himself discovering his own potential. For most of the film, George’s pain and general bitterness in relation to Ira’s nervousness and good will makes for an effective and often funny balance of drama and comedy however, the film begins to lose its way once George finds himself recovering and wanting to pursue the girl who got away in his youth which pushes the film towards more travelled ground and the film begins to wander without a clear intention of where it will lead based on the relative likeability of Laura, her husband (Eric Bana) and her children and the unlikeability of George. Stretching the plot out too much, the second half is less satisfactory than the first.
Featuring the usual who’s who of Apatow’s previous work, Funny People certainly benefits from such casting decisions this time around. For a film that is near auto-biographical at times, the casting of friends such as Sandler, Rogen, Hill and Apatow’s own wife Mann works well. Adam Sandler puts in an impressive performance as George Simmons, foregoing the OTT hysterics he often employs in his own films and instead giving a more restrained performance as the bitter George. Rogen is likeable as Ira, still possessing the loveable loser charm he perfected in Knocked Up and faring well against Sandler. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman add enjoyable support to Rogen has his flatmates, Hill the slightly neurotic Leo and Schwartzman the narcissistic Mark, star of his own sit-com. Mann holds her own very well amongst the men as Laura, leaving the bitchiness behind of her earlier Apatow-written roles in favour of someone with more sense and heart and Eric Bana appears to relish returning to his comedy roots after years of drama even though his role is part of what feels like a different movie to Funny People’s first hour.
Funny People is more of a drama than a comedy but when it is funny it is very funny. Feeling very personal to both the director, Apatow, and its stars Sandler and Rogen the film is certainly more mature than Apatow’s earlier films but the film does run too long and loses some of the direction and wit of the film’s first hour as it moves into its second half. An enjoyable if flawed film, but one that shows lots of potential for those involved and still satisfying.
Rating: 3/5
