Review: 'Funny People' Not So Funny

If you’re a fan of Judd Apatow movies (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), you’re used to a rarity in Hollywood: a comedy that lasts more than two hours, which leaves Apatow time for funny, offbeat bits that would probably end up on the cutting room floor on your typical 90-minute formulaic comedy. Those little digressions usually work and usually don’t weigh down the movie, but in Funny People, Apatow really pushes his luck. At 150 minutes, it’s his chunkiest film yet and, though it has a good premise and mostly solid performances, it’s also his least tight.

In the film, Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a rich, veteran comedian diagnosed with a rare, lethal disease. He meets a struggling newbie comedian, played by Seth Rogen, who becomes his assistant, joke-writer and unofficial mentee. The movie’s first hour is mostly strong, with the Sandler sinking deeper into his mansion’s plush isolation as he secretly fights the disease and Rogen’s Ira Wright struggling to help him, and his own career, at the same time. Scenes of the two hitting the road for a paid appearance at a MySpace company meeting and of Ira doing stand up in scrappy clubs are well-written and funny with the kind of talky, trash-mouthed, pop-culture-y Jew-geek humor that Apatow excels at. Supporting roles are strong, especially Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill, (tubbier and sharper than ever), who play Rogen’s roommates.

But the farther away from the stage the movie gets, and the more it focuses on a love story involving George and Laura, his ex-love (Apatow's wife, Leslie Mann), the less interesting it becomes. George first contacts her to make amends before he croaks, then tries to win back the married woman when he realizes he’s not dying after all. By the time he and Ira practically camp out in Laura's suburban San Francisco home as George woos her while Ira is stuck babysitting her kids (played by Apatow and Mann’s daughters), you feel like you’re stuck, too. Rogen doesn’t help: It turns out that a line that Hill delivers during the movie, about skinny people not being funny, is true. The more weight Rogen loses as he becomes a leading man in Hollywood, the less compelling he is. His Ira is a dud who doesn’t grow or change in the movie, and Rogen doesn't ever lift him.

One bright spot in then non-action is Eric Bana, who plays Laura's perennially business traveling husband. With his hysterically bewildering Australian accent and cartoon-muscular face, the hitherto serious actor displays a surprisingly funny, and ultimately affecting side. But he can’t save a movie that becomes more grating (thanks in part to Mann’s sticky smile and squeaky voice). Funny People is ultimately not enough of a redemption story, not enough of a love story, not enough of a buddy story—not even, as it turns out, a particularly deep look into the weird race that are comedians. In trying to do it all, it doesn’t do much at all. You’ll laugh all right, but unlike Apatow’s previous flicks, you won’t be quoting it next week. —Damarys Ocaña

SITV.COM Grade: B-

Watch On The Up's Funny People clip below.