Funny People
Funny People indeed has a lot of funny people, most of them playing themselves like Paul Reiser, Norm MacDonald, Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano – pretty much anyone in stand-up comedy who doesn’t have a picture deal right now – even James Taylor not known for any sense of humour at all is pretty funny here. These real comedians are fictitious contemporaries of George Simmons played by Adam Sandler playing an Adam-Sandler-type Hollywood goldmine thanks to a series of goofball movies. He’s currently getting back to his roots doing stand-up but at one club he encounters Ira Wright (Vancouver’s Seth Rogen) and offers him a job as joke writer and personal assistant. Ira can’t believe his luck at not only being able to kiss his day job goodbye but also to get some bragging rights to lord over his only slightly less pathetic room mates Leo (Jonah Hill) and Mark (Jason Schwartzman – who also gets soundtrack credits). Ira is there to hold George’s hand through a life threatening medical crisis which opens the door for morbidly side splitting tirades on death from his pals in the biz but when the coast is clear George has an epiphany and determines to win back Laura (Leslie Mann) the one that got away. Slight problem - she’s married to Clarke (Eric Bana) and has two daughters. The kids by the way are Mann’s real life children Maude and Iris with husband Judd Apitow who wrote and directed the picture and as usual hired all his regulars to work on it. Sandler did himself a solid by hooking up with Apitow (his former room mate) and his crowd because they make him look pretty good. Meantime Apitow clearly has a lot of clout, not only because of the nepotism but also insisting that the film run almost two and a half hours despite studio objections. He may give us a lot of Fully People but no one is laughing at him.