Funny People

Funny People. Written and Directed by Judd Apatow. Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Leslie Mann. Music by Jason Schwartzman and Michael Andrews. Cinematography by Janusz Kaminski.

Want a ridiculous Ben Lyons platitude? W/R/T Apatow's Funny People: See it.

Want a ridiculously cliched film-critic mashup comparison? How about "Funny People is the film Ingmar Bergman would have made had he been inclined to make a film about stand-up comedians."

Want a rabid Apatow-apologist review? Here we go:

I think Funny People is not a comedy. It has people telling jokes, sure, but the film puts those jokes in a context that shows you where they come from. Essentially, Apatow knowingly saps any and all jokes in the film of their humor. I'll explain. If you are telling someone a story that you think is funny and they are not responding, the worst thing that you can do is explain why it is funny to you. That's kind of what Apatow's doing. He's showing you some sad, lonely people mining their own lives for humor. There's a scene where Adam Sandler is singing a song to his audience about his mortality, and he says something to the effect of: "Never visit my grave, fuck all of you." And they laugh. But you know why he's saying it and I could not laugh (though some obviously inebriated audience members at the screening I attended did).

All performances are good at the very least. Sandler is great, but not as good as he was in Punch-Drunk Love. Rogen was great, but not quite as good as he was in Zack and Miri Make a Porno, or Knocked Up. The performance that knocked my socks off was Eric Bana, the Incredible Hulk himself. He has to deliver a horrible monolouge at one point about karma, but he pulls it off. And that's the sign of a great actor. He plays his role so straight it almost takes my breath away.

A sign of an Apatow movie is a glut of supporting characters that don't quite earn their screentime, see the roommates in Knocked Up. But Rogen's roommates in this film, played by Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill, pull their weight. They aren't given an inordinate amount of screentime in the name of funniness. They serve the plot, as that kind of character should.

Overall, I really liked this film, and though it might get overly sentimental in the latter third, it really holds up. B+