Since "The 40-year-old Virgin" it seems like Judd Apatow can do no wrong. So far, I've enjoyed every movie has hand his hands in either as a director or producer. "Funny People" is no different. It works well as a fly-on-the-wall character study of a relationship between a wannabe comic named Ira (Seth Rogen) and veteran comic/actor George (Adam Sandler).What works: For all the raunch Rogen has offered to the masses through his handful of films so far, he's excellent at playing the innocent and naive Ira. Adam Sandler is hard to take seriously when he's doing straight drama, as in "Reign Over Me," but here his performance was very natural as an over-the-hill comic who has no one because he's become a tremendous self-serving dick. The two have great on-screen chemistry. The relationship Ira has with his roommates (played by Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman) is funny, and a consistent source for laughs.
What doesn't work: The love angle felt less about telling a good story, and more about trying to get ladies into movie seats. Without it, you're literally left with a guy movie littered with dick and fart jokes, but with it, you've got an extra sappy storyline heaped on top of the festivities that works to only grind the film to a dead stop. Because of the love angle, the movie always runs WAY too long. Clocking in at just over two hours and twenty minutes, this movie oughta be no more than an hour and forty-five minutes, two hours tops. And the Eminem cameo wasn't funny...it was just kind of weird, in a "Where in the hell is this coming from" sort of way.
High-Rent on this one.
JB says check it out.
