His Take/Her Take: Funny People

Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every week, exclusively on CityNews.ca.

Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .

FUNNY PEOPLE

Rated R
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Official Site IMDb

When a comedian is diagnosed with a rare blood disease he is forced to look at how he’s lived his life and what he wants to do to change it.

Brian’s Take

** out of 5 stars

Third time is not a charm for writer-director Judd Apatow. Given his track record with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up I expected Funny People to be a solid film that would deliver a lot of laughs and be…funny. But with a running time of 146 mins., an annoying lead (Adam Sandler) and a disjointed storyline that is downright depressing at times; I have to say I found it hard to like let alone laugh at.

George Simmons (Sandler) is a very rich and famous comedian. He’s worked his way up from being a stand-up comic playing clubs to starring in Hollywood blockbusters like Merman (he’s a mermaid man) and Re-Do (he plays a baby). When he learns he has a rare blood disease and could die soon he starts to long for the woman who got away and the family he never had.

On the other end of the scale is Ira Wright (Seth Rogen). He’s a young, fresh comic trying to make a name for himself doing stand-up at the local comedy club. He lives with his comedian friends Mark (Jason Schwartzman) and Leo (Jonah Hill). While Mark is raking in the cash on the television show Yo Teach…! and Leo is doing great online (mainly with videos of himself and cats on YouTube), Ira is stuck working at a deli counter in order to pay the bills.

One night before Ira is about to go on stage George shows up at the club and wants to do an impromptu routine. Everyone is excited that ‘The’ George Simmons is going to perform. Sadly, he gets up in a depressed state and bombs. With a silent crowd Ira goes on and turns his jokes to the disaster he just witnessed from Simmons. George watches from the side and the next day offers Ira a job writing jokes for him. The rest is quite predictable and writes itself.

Although Funny People could be autobiographical for Sandler he’s horrible in it. He’s just not funny anymore (debatable if he ever was) and he really grated on my nerves. You never feel a connection to his character and in the end we get an overall very boring performance out of him. He and Rogen look uncomfortable sharing the screen together too and have no chemistry. I think if someone like Mike Myers or Eddie Murphy took this role the movie could have been a lot stronger.

Problems with Sandler aside; it’s Rogen, Schwartzman and Hill that carry the bulk of the film. When the three of them are on-screen together it’s priceless. Schwartzman really stands out with his deadpan delivery which is a nice balance to the brashness of Rogen and Hill. Rogen comes across fresh and lively until he’s on-screen with Sandler. Then he turns into a bumbling idiot that stands around taking up space and not offering anything of value.

The stand-up bits were the biggest disappointment for me. If there was one thing this cast and crew knew how to do I thought this was it. Unfortunately, they were poorly edited and paced and the jokes sucked.

I would have been fine with the movie not being funny if the seriousness of it worked. Apatow did this great with Knocked Up. One minute you were laughing hard the next you were crying hard. Here it just doesn’t move you at all. George’s disease is brushed off (even though he could die) and his love for his ex, Laura (Leslie Mann), seems forced at best. Either Apatow doesn’t think he needs to try anymore or he’s running out of steam.

When most of the laughs come from cameo appearances you know you have a stinker on your hands. I say take your money to a real comedy club and see what real funny people are like.

Suzanne’s Take

** out of 5 stars

Funny people? Perhaps. Might I add selfish, dull, mean-spirited and obnoxious?

That’s one of my main beefs with Funny People , Judd Apatow’s dispiriting third effort following the brilliant Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin : I didn’t like most of the people I was forced to sit and watch for two-and-a-half hours. Add to that a mangled plot with a third act so completely disjointed from what preceded it, it felt like a wholly different film, and you can’t help but conclude that writer-director Apatow has lost some of his Midas touch.

Funny People is being called Apatow’s first foray into dramatic territory, and the themes – terminal disease, infidelity, career anxiety – are indeed weightier than what we’ve seen from him in the past. The main character, George Simmons (Adam Sandler), is a middle-aged former stand-up comedian whose career, which included a number of laughably-awful Hollywood comedies (clearly a dig at Sandler’s repertoire), seems to be on the downturn. At the same time, he finds out he’s suffering from a rare form of leukemia that will almost certainly kill him.

Simmons agrees to experimental medicine (from Canada!), but knows his future looks grim. With no family or friends to turn to, he visits a familiar place: a stand-up comedy club. But when the veteran comedian gets up on stage on improv night, he bombs. Impressed by up-and-coming funnyman Ira Wright (a slimmed-down Seth Rogen), Simmons hires him to write some material for his act. That job morphs into Wright becoming Simmons’s personal assistant — a thankless position that involves Wright talking Simmons to sleep at night, and generally grinning and bearing insult after insult, as we discover there’s not much to like about the down-on-life star. Wright gamely takes the jabs, figuring that under Simmons’s tutelage he’ll become a more successful comedian. Besides, he’s tired of toiling at a deli counter while his roommates Leo (Jonah Hill) and Mark (Jason Schwartzman) brag about their respective triumphs in the showbiz world.

I found it curious, and somewhat worrying, that two completely different trailers emerged for this film. The first one I saw focused on George’s illness, his lost love, and his friendship with Ira. The second one contained barely any of that, featuring Ira, Leo, and Mark cracking jokes in a spot that looked decidedly lighter. Confused, I wondered why the apparent shift in marketing: were there fears Apatow in serious mode wouldn’t translate at the box office?

I also wanted to know how a film with so many apparent themes, characters and plot points would work. The answer? It didn’t. About two-thirds of the way through Funny People, which to that point had dealt mainly with George’s illness, his budding friendship with Ira, and the tough business of stand-up comedy, Apatow switched gears. As if feeling the need to introduce a romantic element, the latter part of the film deals almost entirely with George’s attempt to reconnect with Laura (Leslie Mann), the love of his life who’s now married. As Clarke, Laura’s exuberant Australian husband, Eric Bana was hilarious and gave one of the strongest performances in the film. That said, I think Funny People would’ve benefited immensely from dropping this whole storyline. It added nothing, and its resolution was anything but satisfying.

With one exception — an amusing appearance by James Taylor — I also didn’t see the point of all the cameos. Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano, Eminem, Paul Reiser, Norm MacDonald and others appear on screen at one point or another, but they struck me as little more than distractions.

There were, naturally, stand-up bits scattered throughout the film, and depending on your sense of humour you’ll laugh or you won’t. I chuckled a few times but not nearly as much as I thought I would given the talent of those involved.

Sorry Judd, guess you can’t knock it out of the park every time. Time to get serious and return to what you do best: comedy.