LESLIE MANN, ADAM SANDLER, SETH ROGEN, AND ERIC BANA, NOT BEING FUNNY

Not so funny, not so deep

Funny People is only the third movie Judd Apatow has actually directed, but he has acquired a vast sweep in the world of entertainment as a promoter and producer of comedy. He’s had a hand in so many laugh projects, formally attaching his name to another feature seems fraught with significance. This time he focuses on the people he knows best – comics. And this movie has a wealth of material, some of it in theory deeply personal. But while sacrificing the hilarity he achieved in 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked up, or achieved vicariously through the comedy TV series and films he’s fostered or organized, Apatow doesn’t ultimately compensate by achieving profundity in Funny People. While the trailers hinted that there might be something ground-breaking here, the whole movie turns out to have been a misstep.

Lying behind this new project is the old cliché that people who are funny for a living are sad inside, that "funny people" aren't funny. The picture of current comedy the movie provides us with, with its excess of penis jokes and lack of either wit or good topical commentary, is a dim one. Worse yet, Funny People is poorly constructed -- meandering and too long, with a last segment that belongs in another movie, or better, on the cutting room floor. Funny People is still a must-see for students of contemporary American comedy as everything associated with Apatow is, but it’s a disappointment, and even a bit of a chore to watch.

The screenplay makes darn sure its chief clown will be sad inside -- and outside too. George Simmons (Adam Sandler, once Apatow’s real life roommate), who’s gotten rich and famous not off wit but witlessness -- high concept Eddie Murphy-style comedies – gets told he has leukemia. But he’s a deeply sad man anyway, cold and friendless, hanging out only with celebrities and fans, living in a mansion full of useless swag. Trying to return to standup, he does a routine that’s nothing but self-pity. Young hopeful Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) follows him at the mike and mocks that. This gets George’s attention and he hires Ira as his joke writer, gofer, and nursemaid.

Ira has two roommates, also Hollywood hopefuls. One, Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman), is an actor who preens himself on his lead role as a teacher in a mediocre TV series. The other is a glib fat boy called Leo (Jonah Hill) who tells Ira his recent weight loss undermines his comic potential. Apatow looks about to have some fun with the joke-trading and in-fighting between Ira and his roomies, but this is a disappointment, as is all the joking. There are too few jokes at home, the snippits at the club are too brief, and there’s never anything really hilarious. Some reviews suggest Ira, Leo, and Schwartzman trade witty vicious improvised barbs. Of course there's some improvising, but that's not remotely true.

George’s brooding leads him to some unconvincing mending of bridges, shown in an irrelevant montage. Did it take leukemia for him to realize he’s been lonely? Anyway, he decides to drag Ira up to Marin County and visit his former best girl, Laura, whom he cheated on and lost. She's played by Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, a lightweight actress, whose kids play her kids. George pointlessly injects himself between Laura and her husband of twelve years, Eric Bana (allowed to use, and mocked for, his real Australian accent). This whole section takes the Funny People away from what little it had going for it, into the realm of a wanabe Nora Efron movie.

Some critics have given Apatow a high pass for this effort as “sprawling” because it’s “deeply personal.” Some have even said Adam Sandler proves an interesting straight actor as he was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love. Greatly exaggerated claims for a film that is basically a disaster. The main character in such a context hardly acquires a life of his own. Sandler has a strong presence yet is a non-person, a cold bloke. He’s no Gloria Swanson, just a warning against becoming famous. His George Simmons, like most of the Apatow characters, is an adolescent who’s gotten rich and fat instead of growing up. The real story might be how close these details are to the actors own experience, but the movie isn't brave or bold enough to take thaty on.

Funny People gets its only warmth from Seth Rogen, who has become more visible since his last Apatow-directed movie, Knocked Up. He’s the one who makes having Sandler on the screen bearable. He’s been an amiable straight man ever since “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared,” Apatow’s two TV series, which still remain his most engaging efforts. (Maybe the restrictions on language of mainstream TV aren’t such a bad idea.) Rogen was a great foil for James Franco in Pineapple Express. If some of his other projects are less successful, he at least deserves credit for breaking out on his own. But Rogen, alas, is also one of the main contributors to the movie’s wretched excess of unfunny penis jokes, though one routine he does at the comedy club is the film’s most extended and amusing such moment – as well as, significantly, an avoidance of profanity. Those below-the-belt cracks get laughs the way boys at school get them by talking dirty when the teacher is out of the room. We can do better, and so should Judd Apatow.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.