Funny People (2009)

Jack & I saved this to see with Amy (Christiana and Kara went with us too). Profane? Of course. Too long? Yes to that, too. It would have been easy to snip 20 minutes here and there and put it under 2 hours. But it was still very funny some of the time (and serious some of the time, too--that's when the cell phones in the theatre lit up with people texting and checking messages). 

As Terry Gross said on NPR's Fresh Air, Judd Apatow has created a comedy franchise. I saw and liked, when they were on the air, a few episodes of the TV series The Critic (animated, 1994-95) and loved every one of The Larry Sanders Show (1993-97) and Undeclared (2001-03), all of which he produced (among other people). Recently Jack and I enjoyed every one of Freaks & Geeks (1999-2000). When Apatow moved to feature films, he wrote, produced, and directed The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), and this one; was a producer on Superbad (2007) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008); as well as writing and producing Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008), and Pineapple Express. And those are just the ones I have seen (I liked all but the last). He met Adam Sandler while working at the Improv comedy club and they became roommates when Apatow dropped out of USC after his second year. 

The prank phone call footage that opens Funny People is real videotape from that time. I'm not a big Sandler fan. I've missed some of the big broad ones, and, although he's been in some movies I have liked, I often preferred his co-stars: in Anger Management (2003) Jack Nicholson, in Spanglish (2004) Téa Leoni and Paz Vega, in The Longest Yard (2005) Chris Rock and Burt Reynolds, although in Punch-Drunk Love (2002), with Emily Watson, he was a treat and his over-the-top Zohan was very funny. 

Seth Rogen, who figured prominently in many Apatow projects named above, winces, whines, and irritates (he apparently vowed to boycott Entourage after they made fun of his looks, yet he disses a real actor in this one, though I can't remember whom) (I did like him in Zack & Miri Make a Porno). Jonah Hill (co-star of Superbad and supporting in many of the above Apatow oeuvre) and Jason Schwartzman's (I Heart Huckabees (2004), Shopgirl (2005), Marie Antoinette (2006), Darjeeling Limited (2007), all good, and Ringo Starr in Walk Hard) characters are pushy and annoying, to comic effect. Leslie Mann is Apatow's real-life wife (also his cast regular), and their children Maude and Iris play her children Mable and Ingrid here, and I think Mable is my favorite character (stay to listen to her sing over the credits). Or maybe it was Rapper RZA, who plays Rogen's co-worker at the grocery deli counter. RZA's soundtrack credits include Knocked Up, the excellent Forest Whitaker vehicle Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), and 8 Mile (2002), which starred rapper Eminem, who had one of the many cameos in Funny People. In fact, the cameos and Hollywood in-jokes helped make this work for me, as well as the joke-jokes, i.e. the stand-up comedy. 

So the deconstruction above may lead you to believe I didn't enjoy this. But the total is greater than the sum of its parts and all five of us had a good time watching it last week. It's a testament to Apatow's talent (and his franchise).