Post by Eric T. Jones on Aug 1, 2009 23:10:00 GMT -5
RATING (0 to ****): ***
What do I have to say about the latest film from Judd Apatow's catalog, which for every truly great, side-splittingly hilarious and incredibly poignant film like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and the even better "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", are mediocre clunkers like "Pineapple Express", "Superbad", or the biggest bomb of them all, "Knocked Up"?
His first film to *not* be about something sexual, 95% of the jokes told in this film about stand-up comedians are the same exact dick-and-balls joke as sophisticated as an episode of "Terrance and Phillip". In the words of James Taylor (playing himself), after Ira (Seth Rogen) asks if he's tired of playing the same songs: "you ever get tired of talkin' about your dick?"
This is the exact audience that complained "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" was extremely hit-and-miss with tired crude humor, but they ate up the one joke in this film which seemed to be the very mention of any male organ is enough to elicit loud, boisterous laughter.
Sure enough, when the stand-up isn't about penises or testicles, most if not all of it is quite hilarious. The best scene, comedy-wise, is a charming bar scene with more cameos than you can shake a stick at, all of them charmingly used (Eminem vs. Ray Romano? You bet, and Marshall has the decency to make fun of himself by playing it completely serious).
However, "Funny People" has another seed which it plants in its very opening minutes, leaving no doubt that it's just as much a drama as a comedy (contrary to that same excuse I hear for straight-up comedy "Knocked Up" being dreadfully unfunny). Rather than being "another disease movie", the twist which is given away in the trailers leads to the most compelling part of the movie which is a love triangle drama.
With a complex but carefully woven ensemble, the outcome of the love story is less predictable than you'd expect, never seeming too cloyingly optimistic and "movie-like", nor does it ever evoke an overbearing, pessimistic tone. Contrary to Apatow's two previous films as director, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", the plot gives no clear ending point, and suffice to say it presents just the kind of close I love.
(that's a warning that you'll very likely hate how it ends, kenny)
The biggest alarm to me was the film's published 146-minute runtime (I clocked it at 2 hours 20 minutes and left, as end credits surprises in Apatow films are rare). One of my biggest problems with Apatow-produced films is that they're almost always much longer than they need to be. The theatrical cuts of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" knew the proper length of a comedy, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was so good that adding 17 minutes for a shockingly long unrated version didn't make a scratch, but films like "Pineapple Express" and "Knocked Up" had severe pacing problems that losing half an hour would have more than fixed.
I have no such complaints about "Funny People", as the script improvements needed are in the joke content rather than anything that could be trimmed. And might I say it? As the minutes clocked by, I was actually surprised that I liked the film!
What do I have to say about the latest film from Judd Apatow's catalog, which for every truly great, side-splittingly hilarious and incredibly poignant film like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and the even better "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", are mediocre clunkers like "Pineapple Express", "Superbad", or the biggest bomb of them all, "Knocked Up"?
His first film to *not* be about something sexual, 95% of the jokes told in this film about stand-up comedians are the same exact dick-and-balls joke as sophisticated as an episode of "Terrance and Phillip". In the words of James Taylor (playing himself), after Ira (Seth Rogen) asks if he's tired of playing the same songs: "you ever get tired of talkin' about your dick?"
This is the exact audience that complained "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" was extremely hit-and-miss with tired crude humor, but they ate up the one joke in this film which seemed to be the very mention of any male organ is enough to elicit loud, boisterous laughter.
Sure enough, when the stand-up isn't about penises or testicles, most if not all of it is quite hilarious. The best scene, comedy-wise, is a charming bar scene with more cameos than you can shake a stick at, all of them charmingly used (Eminem vs. Ray Romano? You bet, and Marshall has the decency to make fun of himself by playing it completely serious).
However, "Funny People" has another seed which it plants in its very opening minutes, leaving no doubt that it's just as much a drama as a comedy (contrary to that same excuse I hear for straight-up comedy "Knocked Up" being dreadfully unfunny). Rather than being "another disease movie", the twist which is given away in the trailers leads to the most compelling part of the movie which is a love triangle drama.
With a complex but carefully woven ensemble, the outcome of the love story is less predictable than you'd expect, never seeming too cloyingly optimistic and "movie-like", nor does it ever evoke an overbearing, pessimistic tone. Contrary to Apatow's two previous films as director, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", the plot gives no clear ending point, and suffice to say it presents just the kind of close I love.
(that's a warning that you'll very likely hate how it ends, kenny)
The biggest alarm to me was the film's published 146-minute runtime (I clocked it at 2 hours 20 minutes and left, as end credits surprises in Apatow films are rare). One of my biggest problems with Apatow-produced films is that they're almost always much longer than they need to be. The theatrical cuts of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" knew the proper length of a comedy, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was so good that adding 17 minutes for a shockingly long unrated version didn't make a scratch, but films like "Pineapple Express" and "Knocked Up" had severe pacing problems that losing half an hour would have more than fixed.
I have no such complaints about "Funny People", as the script improvements needed are in the joke content rather than anything that could be trimmed. And might I say it? As the minutes clocked by, I was actually surprised that I liked the film!