“Do one thing and do it well.” That famous bit of advice was obviously not remembered by Judd Apatow when he decided to make Funny People, where the successful director and producer attempts to juggle so many plates at once that he ends up dropping them all in the end.
There’s a general consensus that says that many of the best comedians derive their humor and material from pain in their lives. Tragedy, illness, abuse – somehow, these have become the best friend to the jokester. It is no different with George Simmons, the Adam Sandler-like character played by, well, Adam Sandler. George, like every Spielberg protagonist since the beginning of time, has Daddy issues; namely, that his was (somewhat) abusive, and Simmons’ lifelong struggle has been to make Papa laugh, an endeavor at which he claims to have failed. This failure has provided him motivation to become a famous stand-up and movie star, featured in such (fictional) films as Re-Do, in which Simmons plays a character with an infant’s body and his adult head. Even the fictional movie-within-a-movie features parental issues. On top of all this, we learn that George is now suffering from a rare blood disease that just might kill him. Send in the clowns…
It is with this setup that Apatow attempts to analyze the comic’s mind, but that’s not enough for him, unfortunately. He sees this as an opportunity to give a behind-the-scenes look at the profession of being a stand-up, the home life of a Hollywood mega-star, and the chance for our star to reconcile with a flame of yesteryear, amongst other things. This leads to a bloated two-and-a-half-hour film that not only often feels like James L. Brooks at his most saccharine, but also covers some ground we’ve seen covered time and again, and much better I might add (say, the first few seasons of Entourage).
Of course, this isn’t to say that there aren’t high points along the way. Along with Simmons, the film concurrently documents the journey of Ira Wiener (Seth Rogen), a wannabe stand-up who lucks into the prime gig of Simmons’ joke-writer/personal assistant. Though there have been a fair share of films having to do with stand-ups (Punch Line and Comedian probably serving as the prime examples), neither have focused on what it means to be a struggling comedian in the way that Funny People does with Ira and his peers. Ira’s journey was reminiscent of Mickey Rourke’s in The Wrestler, a comparison not hurt by the fact that both men had day jobs working in the deli department of a grocery store. Although Randy the Ram’s struggle was multiplied by his having to overcome past fame and current drug addiction, both men are fighting in an ultra-competitive world to make a name for themselves, taking any gigs they can on nights and weekends, all for little or even no pay. Something tells me that a film about a longer-in-the-tooth stand-up just beginning to give up on his dream isn’t far off from reality; hell, if they could re-make The Wrestler with Jeff Bridges and country music and win Oscars with Crazy Heart, why can’t the same be done with the stand-up world?
It’s that longing for something a bit better that I’ll be left with by Funny People. It had many of the proper ingredients to be a success – a fit and trim Rogen at his least cloying, Sandler toning it down to play an adult, celebrity cameos (Eminem’s was particularly effective and hilarious), the peering behind the curtain – but tried too hard to be too many things and ended up getting booed off the stage.
Andrew (8)
Wayne (8)
John (6)
Josh (6)
Justin (5)
Lauren (5)
Steve (5)
Dave Enkosky (4)
Jessica (4)
Sir Phobos (4)
This movie was long…and that’s all I remember. I did particularly like Eric Bana in this movie though. He was funny. But otherwise…it didn’t quite live up to it’s title.
Choice review!
Wow, fantastic initiative Dylan and Kai! I can see this site going big in no time. The site layout is great as well.
One suggestion though: get the Disqus plugin for WordPress. It’ll make commenting that much breezier.
Twitter: manilovefilms
May 18, 2011 7:14 am
Thanks, Anders!
Someone else mentioned Disqus, but I’ve had it previously, and while there are some great things about it, I found it to be a bit glitchy (i.e. people not getting their email comment subscriptions that they signed up for and issues with comment synching), and those things were big no-nos. We’re both fans of WP’s comment system.
Fair enough, I just find it easier to track comments across multiple blogs — and quickly login when commenting — since I use it on my sites.
So tell me: how much better is WordPress compared to Blogger. (I’ve deliberately left out the question mark…)
Twitter: manilovefilms
May 18, 2011 7:24 am
I’m actually a big proponent of Blogger. The thing that drags them down most is indeed their commenting system, which irks many people for many different reasons (my biggest one being the lack of nested comments). But I love the malleability of Blogger – you can make it do pretty much anything you want it to, and with relative ease and for free (if you desire), whereas if you want anything remotely customizable w/ WordPress, you gotta pay. Aside from that, they’re awfully similar.
Pay?! Never!
You get complete flexibility with WordPress.ORG (not .com). Honestly, it’s almost criminal they give the platform to you for free, especially when you start tapping into the user-created plugins and widgets. From my knowledge, it’s far more open source than Blogger, which likes to keep things a little more homogenized. You can always pick a blogger blog, but WordPress? You’d be surprised to learn what big-name sites are running it.
The only downside, of course, is that you then have to pay for hosting. But in this day and age, it costs very little, depending on traffic.
I have had really bad experiences with Disqus twice and I’ll never go back to it.
First time it completely shut down on me (I couldn’t even see old comments). The second time was when people couldn’t log onto the widget in any of the options that were configured.
Hmm, well it’s interesting to hear the other side of the argument, but I’ve had no issues with disqus as both a publisher and a commenter on other sites.
I think I liked Funny People more than you did. It fell a little flat at the end, but did have interesting viewpoints from both the newbie and the pro.
I’ve always thought it would be awesome to be rich, but really not so awesome to be famous. I think this movie dealt with that nicely.
Side note: I was checking up on Bana after watching this movie and found out he actually got his start in comedy.
Twitter: manilovefilms
May 19, 2011 12:03 am
By which you’re referring to me, right?
Twitter: manilovefilms
May 19, 2011 12:05 am
Funny, I thought I liked it more than you! I might have been a bit harsh on the score, but I think that’s because it dragged on and ended pretty poorly. Well, the final five minutes I liked, but the preceding 30 before that were pretty painful. Still, it had a lot of good ideas; just too many, perhaps, for one movie.