Dueling Film Reviews - Round Two: JDub on WHayes
Posted 5/28/2010 by JDub in Labels: Adam Sandler, Dueling Film Reviews, film, Funny People, JDub, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen
WHayes says that he hesitates to call Funny People inconsistent. I, however, do not hesitate to do exactly that. The movie's title tells us one way to approach interpreting each scene as they relate to the film as a whole. Perhaps one focus of Funny People is on the comedians, comedic actors, and other celebs in the movie and how they act and interact with fans and one another on day-to-day terms. For me, that would net a sufficiently light-hearted and entertaining film.Then there's George's disease and his having to cope with his apparent mortality which demonstrates the dehumanizing effect of one's celebrity status. George's fame, in a way, has driven his so far away from meaningful human interaction that he's forced to pay Ira to keep him company. All of a sudden, George finds himself helpless and alone surrounded by an enormous house filled with expensive things. His audiences are so far disconnected from his reality that they cheer him no matter how depressing he is on stage. This conflict, and his building a relationship with Ira, add a pleasant amount of depth and struggle to the sufficiently light-hearted and entertaining film.
The problem for me comes when we discover that Funny People is actually supposed to be about how George let Laura get away and how his terminal disease stirs up his feelings for her. The way I see it, we've now taken a nice, light-hearted, entertaining comedy with sufficient depth and struggle (and romance between Ira and Daisy, to boot) and essentially Frankensteined a third arm onto a film that already had two perfectly good ones, thank you very much.
For this, I would absolutely call Funny People inconsistent because the film itself cannot seem to decide what it wants to be about. If it should indeed about George's attempt to rekindle his romance with Laura, then I agree with WHayes' notion of the cameos becoming "clouding and distracting." One of the movie's three arms must go.
I find myself wondering why I find Laura and her husband Clarke to be the two least interesting and/or believable characters in Funny People... and what the hell is wrong with the movie having only those first two arms?
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