Welcome to TBO.com. Skip directly to: our Keyword Search, Section Navigation, Content.

TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online

John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

Blood, Violence and Babes
John Allman

Most Recent Entries

Monthly Archives

Funny People

Posted Dec 8, 2009 by John Allman

Updated Dec 8, 2009 at 01:07 AM

Funny People
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Run time: 153 minutes
Rating: Unrated
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: Long, uneven and criminally unfunny, Judd Apatow’s latest has much on its mind but no good way to say it.

“Funny People” is his first bomb, but the director of “Knocked Up” needn’t worry. As his all-star cast can attest to, it takes more than one ginormous bomb of a movie to derail a career.

From Adam Sandler to Seth Rogen to Eric Bana, each knows the pain of having a film open to critical and box office apathy.

Sandler is particularly astute at rebounding from his duds, and his character, George Simmons, basically plays like an angrier version of Sandler’s real self, his character having starred in all manner of silly comedies where he is forced to morph into stupid characters like a baby or merman.

It’s an interesting idea that goes nowhere, particularly since Sandler himself has made a mint off juvenile movies like “The Waterboy” and “Billy Madison.”

Rogen actually does a good job playing off Sandler and the rest of the capable cast. His scenes with Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill are riotous.

What Apatow is apparently trying to talk about with “Funny People” is how humor can be used to mask not only pain, but failure, on almost every human level. His script careens from peaks to valleys, over and over, going from some solid stand-up comedy routines to long stretches without a laugh as Sandler’s character struggles with a terminal diagnosis and berates everyone around him.

There’s a critical point about midway where Apatow decides to reverse the fates, and see what might happen if something incredible, but not wholly unbelievable, occurred. It’s all downhill from there. The movie loses its focus and introduces an unnecessary subplot about Sandler’s manchild trying to recapture his long lost love.

“Funny People” just isn’t funny enough, and that’s a shame.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Leslie Mann is she hot.
Nudity – No.
Gore – No.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – None.
Buy/Rent – Neither.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Exclusive features: Deleted scenes, prank calls, PocketBlu app for iPhone. Additional Features: Stand Up – Funny People live; “Funny People Diaries – A Documentary”; gag reel; director and cast commentary with Apatow, Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler; archived footage of Rogen, Sandler and Apatow; “The Films of George Simmons”; James Taylor live performance; five episodes of “Yo, Teach” with behind-the-scenes; more.
On the Web – http://www.funnypeoplemovie.com/
Release Date – Nov. 22, 2009