Funny People (viewed at Pacific Place on July 31, 2009) 10/15/2009

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As I noted in my review of I Love You Man, I have a love-hate relationship with Apatow. While I thought 40 Year-Old Virgin was an incredibly funny and fresh comedy, his shtick quickly grew stale. Really, how many times can you retreat the same old ground: man-child suffering from arrested development. After a certain point, you just want to yell out, "come on, dude, grow up." What's especially frustrating is that Apatow's short-lived television series Freaks and Geeks was amazing. It seems that those directionless high-school students that Apatow created just never managed to grow up.

Funny People, then, might be considered Apatow's first real attempt at a grown-up comedy. Adam Sandler plays a thinly-veiled version of himself, George Simmons. A middle-aged comedian who's had a run of successful films, Simmons is faced with a terminal disease. Much to no one's surprise, this results in his reflecting back on his life and realizing that all the success that he's had doesn't amount to much. At this point, there's nothing new here in the film's overall story line and structure.  What really makes this first part of the film worthwhile are the three supporting characters, three young comics trying to make it in Hollywood. The energy of these struggling three makes for an interesting contrast to Simmons' very established yet lonely life. If the film had stayed on course and focused on this, I think Funny People would have been a far more worthwhile film. As it is, the film veers away from this story and dramatically changes gears. 


In the second half of the film, Simmons seeks redemption by looking up an old girlfriend -- "the one who got away" when he chose his career over love. At this point, then, the film turns into a drab romance. While Eric Bana's short cameo is entertaining enough, it hardly makes up for the clumsy storyline. There's something about American films that no matter what the subject matter, there has to be a romantic element, some kind of relationship angle. If you're lucky, the romance is fairly innocuous but, more often than not, it tends to really diminish the film. In this case, it really diminishes the film.