Funny People

SPOILER WARNING.

Judd Apatow. The name has pretty much created a whole new sub-genre of comedy movies. A whole new ‘clique’ in which certain people are privvy to being in a collection of movies with similar themes, plots and actors. They’ve been criticised as being mysoginistic and embodying the teenage fantasy of the geek getting the babe; and whilst some of the movies are quite humourous in places, others have started to dip in quality as the impact of the movies and the sub-genre have entered the creative consciousness. Probably best summed up with this great College Humour song.

Funny People is essentially the film that could knock Apatow off that stereotype. The plot and the subject matter is quite dark compared to his previous films and associations – and opens the director to perhaps explore other avenues apart from romantic comedies for geeks. But what starts off as a very funny and interesting film that could be about the friendship between a huge film star and an upandcoming comic who needs to improve starts to turn slightly sour and muddled up once the romance part of the film kicks in.

You know how in Monty Phyton and the Meaning Of Life – where the supporting feature suddenly comes in to invade the main feature? It’s like that, only the supporting feature pretty much comes in and takes over. After a few years decides to apss some reforms to allow the actual movie some freedom to breathe and carry on it’s business.

The main gist of the story is that film star George Simmons (Sandler) is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in which there’s only 8% of survival. Depressed, he goes back on the comedy circuit and ends up getting a young comedian called Ira Wright (Rogan). Once an assistant/mentoring rapport begins to build – Simmons finds he’s actually beaten the cancer and goes after the ‘one that got away’. The only problem is that this occurs so long into the movie that it completely swamps the story and interesting relationship between Rogan and Sandler’s characters takes a slight back-seat as Leslie Mann and Sandler make googily eyes at each other. Attention is kept through Eric Bana using his real accent and having an absolute blast with everything. But this romance side-track really begins to drag and changes the enjoyment in the film. What was a funny look into the nature of struggling stand-up comedy turns into a bittersweet life-lesson; but the way the romantic sojourn is handled ends strangely and just doesn’t feel as if it really achieved anything at all.

Which is a shame, because amongst it all is a film that could’ve been much better is Leslie Mann’s role was greatly reduced and perhaps more attention built around the Rogan/Sandler relationship and how the two men do change each other. As it is, it feels uneven and the running time is at least twenty minutes longer than it is (two-hours fifteen).

There are some really good highlights however, with some of the stand-up and interplay between Rogan and Sandler being extremely funny. An extended cameo from Eminem also manages to raise a few smiles as well. There’s also a few laughs with the fake movies that Sandler’s character starred in, which wouldn’t actually be that unrealistic at the present moment.

Overall, Funny People is a much better film bogged down with an unnecessary sub-plot which invades the film.