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LAUGH TILL YOU CRY
FUNNY PEOPLE (R) Is the dramatic-comic
collaboration of former college roommates,
superstar Adam Sandler and Knocked Up
writer-director Judd Apatow, the best film
either has made? Perhaps, but best and per
fect are two differ
ent things. Funny
People is a strange
animal. As raunchy
and immature as The
40-Year-0ld Virgin and
Knocked Up, Apatow's
third film is maturely
depressing. Laughs
are prolific but tem
pered by death's
looming visage. The
assertive seriousness
of the film's subject
matter occasionally outduels the humorous
tone, slackening the pace to a crawl.
In Funny People, Sandler gives the best,
most nuanced performance of his career by
essentially playing himself under the pseud
onym George Simmons. A devastating diagno
sis leaves George pondering his life choices.
His only friend is a newly hired assistant,
wannabe stand-up comic Ira Wright (Seth
Rogen), and his true love, Laura (Apatow's
wife, Leslie Mann) is married (to Eric Bana)
with two kids (Apatow and Mann's daughters,
Maude and Iris). But impending mortality
frees George to amend the mistakes of his past
and he reconnects with Laura.
Meanwhile, Ira toils in the shadows of
his two pals, crappy sitcom star Mark (Jason
Schwartzman) and more successful fellow
stand-up Leo (Jonah Hill). Working for George
is Ira's big break, and that is kind of it. The
charming Rogen
impresses as normal,
nice Ira, but his arc is
tragically woeful for
a main character. His
tired romantic subplot
is only redeemed by
the button-cute, dead
pan Aubrey Plaza.
At 145 minutes,
Funny People is far too
long. Apatow's genius
has been aggressively
lauded over the past
four years, and each successive film has become
longer. Someone who is not one of Apatow's pet
editors, Craig Alpert and Brent White, needed to
step up and shear Funny People.
With the Academy doubling the list of Best
Picture nominees to 10, many see Apatow's
serio-comedy as the funny film genre's Great
White Hope. Finding the laughter in mortality
might be the only way a comedy can trick the
Academy into acknowledging it. While no one
was looking, Apatow became the new James
Brooks and Funny People is his penis-joke-
filled Terms of Endearment.
Drew Wheeler
Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen
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