Here’s a friendly word of advice: Adjust your expectations
for Funny People. If you’re a Judd Apatow fan, and you loved
Freaks and Geeks and The 40-Year-Old Virgin and
Knocked Up, and you think, as I do, that Apatow is consistently
involved with some of the funniest and least-insulting comedies being
made, then you’re probably pretty excited for his
newest—especially given the film’s standup comedy bent and an
impressive list of participating actors. Well, dial it down a bit.
Funny People is a long and not unentertaining movie that splices
together elements of every Apatow project to date—but it’s less
the pinnacle of his filmmaking than a synthesis of every theme he’s
spent his career exploring.
The plot hinges on the relationship between famous actor George
Simmons (Adam Sandler) and his young assistant Ira (Seth Rogen),
himself an aspiring comedian. George has been diagnosed with a rare
form of leukemia, and right-hand man Ira is tasked with a range of
duties, from helping George write jokes to sitting by his bed at night
to talk him to sleep. In other plot points, Ira competes for standup
gigs and girls with his two stoner roommates (Jason Schwartzman and
Jonah Hill, both of whom don’t get nearly enough screen time), while
Simmons has a chance to reconnect with “the girl who got away” (Leslie
Mann). From the prioritization of male friendship to an emphasis on
family life (as in Knocked Up, Apatow’s real-life wife and
daughters are cast as a domestic unit), there’s very little that’s new
in Funny People, save its most awkwardly handled storyline: that
of an aging comedian reassessing his life.
For those of us who grew up with Adam Sandler and remember when he
was actually funny (circa 1995), it’s pretty cool to see the man make a
long-overdue return to form: He’s as funny and likeable here as he’s
been in years, since at least 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love. But while
Sandler, Rogen & Co. endow the cancer scenario with as a much humor
and irreverence as could be expected, it’s still… a cancer scenario.
I hope it’s not too insensitive to note that, as far as I know,
audiences haven’t been clamoring for Beaches for dudes.
By far the best parts of Funny People are those that consider
the working life of a standup comedian: the endless joke revisions, the
jealousy and competitiveness, the uneasy relationship with the
audience. The movie is jam-packed with cameos from comedians young and
old—George Wallace, Norm MacDonald, Aziz Ansari, Sarah
Silverman—which has the interesting effect of making the film’s
backdrop far richer and more interesting than its plot.
The best thing about Funny People—other than some very
funny standup comedy routines, and a brilliant James Taylor
cameo—is that it resolutely defies categorization, ignoring every
convention about how its many storylines should unfold. I just wish
there’d been one or two fewer of them.