I Admire Your Pictures Very Much

A Review of "Funny People"
By Jeff Webb

It’s interesting to watch the direction of Judd Apatow’s directorial career play out on cinema screens. With his first film, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Apatow introduced audiences to his stories of “bromance” and men stuck in adolescence. With “Knocked Up,” Apatow covered similar territory, but this time making it a bit more personal, basing it somewhat on his own experiences with becoming a father. Still, there was a sense of the cartoonish in the characters, an outrageousness to the film. With his third and latest film, though—the newly released “Funny People”—Apatow has hit his stride. It is his most focused feature yet, completely realistic and understated and restrained.

The problem with Apatow’s previous two films is not that the stories lack a moral—for they do have a point—but that they sometimes lose focus of that moral, wandering into territory where it just seems like comedy for the sake of comedy. Nothing is learned. Plot and characterization is not advanced.

That is not the case with “Funny People.” Yes, the movie is long—perhaps a bit too long—but every scene plays a part in the bigger story. That story revolves around George Simmons, a popular comedian who, upon finding out he has leukemia, starts to reevaluate his life. Helping him on this journey of self-discovery is young and insecure comedian Ira Wright.

Adam Sandler plays Simmons, and Seth Rogen plays Wright. For the latter, it is clearly the best role of his career, one that is truly unique from his other characters. For Sandler, it is his best since work since 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” and, even at that, Sandler may be even better here than in PTA’s mini-masterpiece. Simmons is Sandler, Sandler is Simmons, and through the course of the film, Sandler plays his part to perfection, never ringing a false note, never going for the zany over the dramatic. It is a character wrought with pain and disappointment, and Sandler plays him just as such.

Some people will walk into the film expecting a comedy, and, while the film is a comedy, it carries quite a bit of dramatic weight with it, as did Apatow’s “Knocked Up.” However, unlike “Knocked Up,” the drama in “Funny People” doesn’t come across as forced or schmaltzy. It feels natural, perhaps because the premise is a serious premise. It is about a man dying. If anything, it is the laughs that feel forced, but the very fact that the man in question is a comedian makes it all seem right.

There is nothing outrageous about “Funny People,” no hair-waxing scene or mushroom trips to Las Vegas or shock value shots of female genitalia. No, like the characters in his films, Apatow finally seems to be growing up, not only addressing themes of adulthood, but also addressing them like an adult: serious, focused, and in control.

Without giving it away, the ending of the film is enough evidence of Apatow’s maturity as a filmmaker. There is nothing grandiose about it. It’s just a plain and simple ending to a fairly plain and simple story, and, thus, by making it all the more real, it becomes all the more relatable.

And that is something every filmmaker—be the genre comedy or drama—should strive to achieve.