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?
So lets keep with the "we'll call it meta" motif for this second round. In his review, Jon cites Funny People's main faults as its length and inconsistency in taking what could have been played as a straightforward drama (with occasional comic relief, like the Saul Goodman character in Breaking Bad) and instead shoehorning in random lighthearted moments, many of which dependent on a celebrity cameo to play well.
Does he reject them outright as Jon says? Not entirely, as he still indulges in the occasional groupie (even when she tells him to do soul-crushing impressions from older movies during coitus). Rather, I think we just get a window into what the character always felt about his life, be it the terrible movies, copious amounts of pointless promotional swag, or his 'bucket list' of people to reconnect with before the end. The swag is still pandering bullshit (yet he finally has a reason to give it away), the groupie's are still a generation removed from being people he could form a real connection to, and the bucket list is still the mix of refreshing (like with Andy Dick), and tediously embarrassing (like with his sister) that it always would have been.
Funny People has been in our pipeline for a while, but I was never sure of the right context to review it. Everything I knew about the movie before seeing it put it on a tough pedestal. Finally seeing it left me with one question: I wonder if its possible for us to have simply too much baggage to make real, lasting catharsis?
If you're anything like me, you hear of a film coming out directed by Judd Apatow and starring many of his usual suspects in Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, plus Adam Sandler, and you get a little excited. Apatow is a quintessential auteur, and because of this, I personally find myself going into his films with certain expectations.
Namely, I expect anything he's written, directed, and/or produced to be funny, basically light-hearted, and not terribly deep. These usually aren't the kind of films you'd expect to see win very many awards with the Academy, but you know they'll be fun and entertaining none the less.
At a very basic level, Apatow's "Funny People" seems to follow right along with these trends. I find the dialogue hilarious and less contrived than it could have been. But don't be fooled: in fact, this film is a drama masquerading as an Apatow comedy. Yes, it's funny, and yes, it's generally light-hearted, but it's also nearly two and a half hours long, and deals in noticably heavier subject matter than one might have expected.
Most Apatow films celebrate casual sex, the use of drugs and alcohol, materialism, and generally deviant behavior, but it is all of these things which Adam Sandler's character rejects when he learns he has a terminal form of cancer. Sandler is excellent in the role: snarky, jaded, and yet totally oppressed by his momento mori. Contrast this with Seth Rogen's character, an aspiring comic who suddenly is thrust into the celebrity lifestyle: his fresh sense of wonder highlights Sandler's depression.
I think "Funny People" employs some of the most effective celebrity cameos of any film I've ever seen. Because Adam Sandler is playing himself, a celebrity, his relationship with other celebrities on screen causes them to become true characters in the film. James Taylor yells "Fuck Facebook!" after a set of music at a MySpace corporate function, Sara Silverman cracks vagina jokes with Sandler just before delivering a pretty excellent stand up comedy routine on camera. Marshall Mathers yells profanely (and hilariously) at Ray Romano across a restaurant for very little reason. There is definitely a focus on humanizing celebrities in this film by presenting them as belivable people.
I'm very satisfied with what Apatow's been able to do with "Funny People," yet I am simlutaneously aware that the film seems to fail somehow. It is simply too damn long. I could have done without perhaps thirty to forty-five minutes of the second half scenes. In the end, the film seems to lack a unified focus because of its rambling length.
Obviously there have been plenty of films to straddle the line between comedy and drama effectively, but "Funny People" seems to shift between purely comedic scenes, and scenes of drama, rather than allowing the two to coexist. The cast carries this film, elevating a bloated, Frankenstein script to something with a very real, natural feel and plenty of humor. Now, if only the script weren't stepping on those toes...
