Funny People (2009)
Directed by Judd Apatow
Famous and wealthy funnyman George Simmons doesn't give much thought to how he treats people until a doctor delivers stunning health news, forcing George to reevaluate his priorities with a little help from aspiring stand-up comic Ira.
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5 films that influenced Funny People
What critics say influenced Funny People
Other filmmakers have taken their shot over the years, "Punchline" and "The King of Comedy" come to mind, yet no one has gotten it quite right.
Of course, characters and dramas built around the anger that fuels the funny constitute a venerable black-humor subgenre: W.C. Fields reveled in the muck, and the jolting movies The King of Comedy and The Entertainer made art out of the emotional contradictions of professional comics.
He was one of the writers of the much-maligned (for my money, unjustly so) "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," and produced a seemingly slight teen comedy, "Superbad," that has become a cult favorite.
The producer-director's hit factory (Anchorman, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Superbad) has already rung up more than a billion pounds at the box office.
The first hour-and-a-half veers toward comedy and provides a few laughs, but there�s mostly uninspired, mean-spirited and tedious humor and, of course, just like in Superbad, some penis jokes to be found along the way.
¶ An adult Apatow would be a significant development since so much recent and future comedy rests under the shade of his very big umbrella -- the mostly super "Superbad," the superbad "Year One" and the somewhat bad "Pineapple Express" among them.
Much is being made of the fact that the sort-of-serious "Funny People" is directed by Judd Apatow, best known for producing a string of comedies like "Superbad" and "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and for directing "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up."
Apatow produced a litany of crushingly awful duds (“Year One,” “Drillbit Taylor”) and directed a terribly overindulgent, and overlong, comedy in “Funny People.”
After devoting his first two films as director, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, to getting laid and having kids, respectively, Judd Apatow brings the circle of life to a close with Funny People, which stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a popular, Sandler-esque movie star diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal form of leukemia.
After two blockbuster hits ( The 40-year-old Virgin and Knocked Up ), Judd Apatow, the newly minted King of Hollywood comedy, has delivered a vastly more ambitious work.
Make no mistake: "Funny People" is unmistakably an Apatow film, meaning it obeys the generic conventions of such predecessors as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" in trotting out raunchy jokes about the male anatomy with tiresome, metronomic regularity.
As a consequence, the script feels strained and haywire, a problem Apatow's "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" didn't face.
Like Mr. Apatow’s previous directorial efforts, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” the audience was often rolling in the aisles.
Tim Burton tried this with the disappointing Big Fish while David Fincher went this route with the stillborn drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
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Apatow has had a hand in the leisure suit-and-sideburn preposterousness of "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," the oblique stoner humor of "Pineapple Express," the sharp-cornered romantic angst of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and the exhausting semicircular gags of "Drillbit Taylor."
Much is being made of the fact that the sort-of-serious "Funny People" is directed by Judd Apatow, best known for producing a string of comedies like "Superbad" and "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and for directing "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up."