Funny People (2009)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Judd Apatow

Writer (WGA):

Judd Apatow (written by)

Release Date:

31 July 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

When seasoned comedian George Simmons learns of his terminal, inoperable health condition, his desire to form a genuine friendship cause him to take a relatively green performer under his wing as his opening act.

Plot Keywords:

Stand Up Comedian | Woman On Top | Employer Employee Relationship | Television Star | Bare Breasts

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Adam Sandler	...	George Simmons
Seth Rogen	...	Ira Wright
Leslie Mann	...	Laura
Eric Bana	...	Clarke
Jonah Hill	...	Leo Koenig
Jason Schwartzman	...	Mark Taylor Jackson
Aubrey Plaza	...	Daisy
Maude Apatow	...	Mable
Iris Apatow	...	Ingrid
RZA	...	Chuck
Aziz Ansari	...	Randy
Torsten Voges	...	Dr. Lars
Allan Wasserman	...	Dr. Stevens
Rod Man	...	Himself
Wayne Federman	...	Comedy & Magic Manager

Also Known As:

Untitled Judd Apatow/Adam Sandler Project (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated R for language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality.

Runtime:

146 min | 153 min (unrated version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #45381) | Canada:18A (British Columbia) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:14A (Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:18A (Alberta/British Columbia) | UK:15 | Australia:MA | Ireland:16 | Singapore:M18 | New Zealand:R16 | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Finland:K-13

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles International Airport - 1 World Way, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

The apartment that Ira (Seth Rogen), Leo (Jonah Hill), and Mark (Jason Schwartzman) live in are the Larchmont Lofts on the corner of Melrose Ave., and N. Larchmont Blvd., in Hollywood, California.

Goofs:

Continuity: The can of Red Bull in George's container of medication keeps changing it's position.

Quotes:

Leo: You son of a bitch! Why didn't you tell me George Simmons wanted us to write jokes for him?

Movie Connections:

References Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Soundtrack:

Keep Me In Your Heart

Judd Apatow's most mature effort to date

Funny People is an in-depth look at the life of stand-up comedians. It's a film about friendship. It's also a film about living life, facing death, and heavy, serious self-reflection, both for the characters portrayed and the actors portraying them.

Adam Sandler's George Simmons is as unlikable a guy as he has ever played, and he makes little effort to garner sympathy from the audience aside from the brief glimpses of the affable Sandler we've come to know. This is him at his most raw and most real, and there are many times when it feels like he could just as well be playing himself; the artifacts of years upon years of starring in mind-numbingly bad, lowest-common-denominator comedies that fill the character's house doesn't come off as self-parody as much as it feels like Sandler taking a step back and looking at where his career has taken him and where his life has gone.

This is also true of Seth Rogen's Ira Wright, an up-and-coming comic probably not unlike Rogen in his younger days. There are still traces of the fun-loving slacker he has so often played, but this time there's something deeper. The character's laziness isn't played up as much as his ambition is, and there are many scenes when he just seems like a wide-eyed kid looking for his big break, amazed that he's been able to meet the man whose movies he grew up watching.

There's also Leslie Mann in another great supporting turn as Simmons' ex-wife, at times hilarious and at others poignantly vulnerable and emotional, proving once again that she's one of the most talented and versatile women working in comedy today. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are also memorable as Wright's more successful buddies, more often than not the funniest characters in the film.

Of course, this movie wouldn't exist without writer-director Judd Apatow, the man behind those masterpieces of comedy The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and while it's not quite on the level of brilliance as those two, it's still an excellent effort. His script is pretty much hilarious from start to finish (although the running gag of referencing Rogen's apparently giant penis gets kind of old after a while) and, as many have already intimated, it plays more like a James L. Brooks movie than anything else, the comedic elements constantly going toe-to-toe with the dramatic ones, sometimes even veering off into full-on drama, especially in the second half.

Mostly everything works, but if I have any complaint with the film, it's that it runs far longer than it needs to. At about two hours and twenty minutes, it often feels like Apatow set out to make a complete documentation of his life up to this point, which is probably truer than we know. It also felt as though certain plot points and character revelations toward the end could have been hit in a smoother, more economic way; the sequence leading up to the emotional climax seemed particularly clumsy, though I may have just been getting restless at that point.

That said, it never once falls into mawkish or sentimental territory, remaining subtle and restrained, and almost constantly going in a different direction than what we expect, the whole film basically leading up to its immensely satisfying and strikingly unconventional final scene, a logical and cliché-defying conclusion that, to make the Brooks comparison once again, hearkens back to the utterly perfect epilogue of his Broadcast News.

Apatow also seems to be coming into his own as a director here. His first two films, fantastically-written though they were, always felt a bit flat as far as the visuals were concerned, most likely due to the amount if improvisation involved, but Funny People seems to have a uniquely personal touch to it, featuring infinitely more creative visuals as well as many superb uses of music (all four solo Beatles, Warren Zevon, and Coconut Records, to name a few).

I'm rambling at this point, but it goes without saying that I loved the film, and it can only get better on repeat viewings.