Funny People (2009)

the leading man is my tpye

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Wow this movie left a warm glow inside you and proves that Adam Sandler is actually a fine actor.It feels like it is almost autobiographical as Sandler's character George is very rich but clearly not happy. Maybe that is how Adam feels about fame? George treats women like crap but clearly it is because he feels that way about himself. In the second half of the movie we see why as he rekindles his romance with his first true love before he became famous. However Eric Bana and two great kids come in to play. Bana is great.Excellent support from Jonah Hill and a whole host of cameos. My favourite is Eminem chewing out Ray Romano for staring at him.

Funny People features Adam Sandler playing a fictionalised version of himself, a past-his-prime comedian and movie star who gets by because fans still recognise him from that movie where he played the merman or the adult baby, and are waiting around for a sequel. He rose from the ashes of a comedy club where guys like Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen are still desperately flapping their wings, and hoping their material mostly consisting of fart jokes and masturbation will be the key to stardom. You see the common ground for the subject matter, you see Judd Apatow directing, and recall Sandler's past resume, and you think to yourself that this won't be a classy movie, nevertheless a good one. But Apatow's intent isn't to sanitise the juvenile trash that these comedians draw upon, but rather use it as a roadmap to their developing emotional maturity. Their routines are a reflection of their sad and often pathetic lives - for Ira losing weight and yet still unable to get a date, and for George a string of meaningless one night stands and a mountain of shiny trinkets ala Citizen Kane. It's not until near the end of the movie that their comedy ceases to be an extension of their failings, no longer a crutch for them to poke fun at their themselves and their lack of purpose. It's no surprise that much of the early humour between the two leads is focused almost entirely on the size of their packages; masculinity in a neat and objective measure. Their sex drives pollute their minds and therefore their relationships, with this toxic mindset spilling out into the anxieties of loved ones: "How could you cheat? I was so hot." Ira only improves himself by reexamining the idiotic expectations he places on his crush Daisy to put out before they even know each other, no longer defining their relationship by how many days left he has to 'score' with her. In the vein of George's ridiculous man-baby movie (surely a jab at the man child persona that Sandler has forged a career with), he must learn how to be a man by shedding the fragile sexual ego and seeing Daisy as her own person with her own decisions (the same personal redemption lifted from half of Kevin Smith's early flicks). I admired how the film and its characters were able to recognise the potentially life-changing experience of being confronted with a fatal illness, but not completely buy into all the mystique of how it HAS to mean that the patient emerges from the other side a better person. Cancer or not, George is stuck in a pit of misery, his closest companions merely professional connections, and his one shot at a meaningful life long gone. In a quietly pathetic scene, he realises that even his good news of remission falls only on hired ears - he has no one to celebrate with, no one to tell but his maid (who nods politely). The same goes for Ira, where George is quick to remind him of his employee status when things don't go his way. A stranger to the concept of a friend, he lashes out at the one person who might actually care for him just because, not for an arbitrary personal gain (Laura seeks the same thing as George, a second chance at a life that is long past its due by date). Seeing it now the film is a rather strange artefact, with Sandler having faded somewhat into obscurity, surrounded by a myriad of comedy alumni who has since gone onto stardom. Perhaps it has more truth than we realise. Sandler has only occasionally dipped into more dramatic roles with surprisingly levels of success, hinting that in an alternate timeline he may have had an entirely different career than we one we know him by. What remains is a matured, restrained performance of a man who has spent his entire life cheering others up but can't do so for himself (the old joke with the depressed clown comes to mind), and is able to harness the baggage of his previous acting personas to demonstrate how his personality dips and reverts back to immaturity when he doesn't get his own way, having been so used to that feeling for most of his life. See his reaction when Laura makes her final decision to take Clarke back, and how George ignores her reasoning completely, instead spluttering a "Come on!" - it's vintage Sandler, not an adult but the whiny baby that he's played so well and often. He hasn't grown up yet, he hasn't learned how to be a man. And it takes some hard words and harder lessons until he finally gets there.

This film was a mess, it was kind of all over the place in that there was no clear plot or message. If you were expecting a film with Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen to be comedic you will be very disappointed. This film is not funny and fails to have any genuine funny moments but some weak jokes here and there. It completely and utterly fails at drama which was so poorly done and unconvincing it was painful to watch. Clearly Adam Sandler is not cut out to be in dramas, the world has firmly placed him in the comedy genre that he has done so well in the past. Leslie Mann is a very unimpressive actress, unfortunately she seems to be showing up in almost every low level B film that might have done better had she not been in it. She mainly plays an over dramatic, whiny and fragile character in almost every modern film and is simply exhausting to watch. In other words she ruins almost every film she is in. Another star was removed just for having her in this film and making it worse than it already was.

The movie feels a little long winded, running at nearly 2 and half hours, and the characters are sad, but interesting. Seeing Adam playing a shadow of himself is certainly a depressing site, and Rogen doing all he can for the man that he admires, since he was a kid, no less, is even better, proving that Rogen isn't a one trick pony, hopefully making this a bit more noticeable for his performance in The Green Hornet next year.The movie also has some great performances from Jason Schwartzman as an actor starring in a horrible television sitcom and Jonah Hill as a competing comedy performer.But there has to be a reason why this movie is ranked so low, and it could almost be said of the running time, but its coming right back to my first paragraph about ironic titles in movies. I suspected a laugh riot, and got mere chuckles. The stand up is hard to enjoy, being very oriented in genitalia humor and sex jokes doesn't make it really funny, just repetitive.And I will be honest: I didn't pay attention to the title business and felt rather disappointed. This is a movie not sitting at the dinner table with all the Apatow produced movies of the last three or four years; like George, he's sitting at his own table, not quite like everyone else.Perhaps now that I've seen the movie for what it truly is, a drama with some funny parts in it, I can now go back and see if maybe I can look at it any differently.