I’m hoping Funny People isn’t a sign that Judd Apatow has started to fall foul of the curse that’s affected many involved in comedy. Their humour starts out tightly and easy for the audience to relate to, but as they get more successful and have more money, there’s a tendency for them to start talking more and more about the problems of being rich and successful and less about ‘real life’. Often at the same time everything starts to feel a bit flabby as they realise things aren’t as do-or-die as they used to be.
Adam Sandler plays stand-up comedy and movie star George Simmons, who begins to re-evaluate his life when he’s diagnosed with a terminal disease. After meeting at a comedy club, he decides to hire hungry, young comedian Ira Wright (Seth Roger) to write some jokes for him and then become his personal assistant. As success has left his life lonely and empty, George starts to rely more and more on Ira’s support through his illness, but Simmons’ attitude and narcissism always stand in the way of a genuine bond.
Then, after his circumstances change, George decides to try and win back his ex-fiancé’s (Leslie Mann) heart, even though she’s now married to another man (Eric Bana). This sets off a new chapter In George’s life, but will he be able to change and really connect with those around him, or will the success that’s led to him being sealed off from normal life, ensure that while he’s become used to being distrustful of what people want from him, it’s actually other people who could never trust him to give them what they need?
This is the third film Apatow has written and directed, after The 40-Year-Old-Virgin and Knocked Up. While his earlier films succeeded partly because they put their everyman characters in situations we could relate to, Funny People is largely about a rich, famous and not particularly sympathetic man, and here ‘the hollowness of fame’ isn’t a theme it’s particularly easy to warm to, despite some interesting and heartfelt ideas about mortality.
The difficulty may be that Apatow is essentially both George and Ira – he was once the guy who wrote jokes for other people, feeding on their scraps as he clawed his way up, but now he’s the Hollywood golden boy who can do pretty much what he wants, making films with his old college roommate (Sandler), wife (Mann) and even casting his kids in the film. As a result while there’s a ring of authenticity to much of what Apatow has to say about the double-edge world of comedy and the people in it, he seems unwilling to fully sink his teeth into either Ira or George. That’s not to say either of them get off Scott free, but the film never seems prepared to completely open up the core of these people, instead shaving off the edges and slightly neutering two otherwise complex characters.
It’s a real shame as there are plenty of great elements to Funny People, quite a few extremely funny scenes (and a massive amount of dick jokes), moments of genuine heart, and a few truly interesting thoughts about mortality and life, but it never succeeds in blending it all together to create the sort of entertaining, serio-comic tone it’s aiming at (in many respects it’s a wannabe James L. Brooks movie).
In order to cover everything it wants to talk about, Funny People keeps changing tone and tack, to the point where the second half of the film feels like a very different movie to the first half, going from pretty dark, funny, pointed and intriguing to rather more sentimental and rom-comy as George tries to reconnect with his ex (although thankfully it doesn’t ever completely disappear into treacle and always retains at least a little edge).
It doesn’t help either that Funny People is ok but not particularly great for two and a half hours. Apatow tested the boundaries of how long a Hollywood comedy could be with the 128 minute Knocked Up, but at 145 mins, Funny People really is pushing it and there’s no doubt there’s a lot of flab that could have done with trimming. The director should be praised for trying to make a comedy that’s a lot more than just a few jokes strung together, but here he could have done with a zeroing in on the meat of his film and cutting out some of the fat (which was also true of Knocked Up, but that film worked better overall).
Apatow certainly hasn’t completely failed with Funny People, but it’s only a decent film that never quite coalesces into a satisfying whole. All Judd’s films have related to fears and questions he must have had in his own life, whether its sex, having children or mortality, but let’s hope that as he gets more successful, he doesn’t lose the ability to really talk to his audience, which has been the fate of so many involved in comedy, and which Funny People hints he may have already started to do.
Overall Verdict: Funny People’s jumping tone and flabby feel means it’s not as satisfying or sharp as it could have been, but it’s not a bad film by any stretch and has plenty of entertaining elements.
Reviewer: Sam Bruneau
