Funny People

After a promising start Judd Apatow has quickly fallen into love him or hate him territory. The main criticisms Apatow receives are that his films are over indulgent and his reliance on the same clique of actors. Well, this film is almost 2 and a half hours long and stars Leslie Mann, Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill. Ahem. Funny People revolves around a period of time that successful comedian George Simmons (played by Adam Sandler) contracts a rare form of leukaemia, which he then appears to recover from due to medication. During his illness Simmond's hires Ira (played smartly by Seth Rogen) to write new stand up material for him as well as being his general dogsbody. The first problem with the film is that, with the exception of Ira, the majority of characters elicit very little sympathy. Simmond’s comes across as such a selfish and ungrateful individual that you don’t really care if he recovers from his illness or not. This may be on purpose by Apatow, but if it was, Simmond’s about turn of character in the films final scene will only have you thinking “Yeah, right”. In addition, there’s no doubt that some people would endure the abuse that Ira gets from Simmond’s in order to get to the top, but from the way Rogan’s character is written, it seems somewhat unrealistic. The second problem is that though this is very funny in parts, Apatow reverts to an overload of the same tire jokes. Seth Rogan not getting laid? More knob jokes? Haven’t we been here before? This is a shame, and a decent editor would have cut some of this dross out and concentrated more on the quality. Talking of quality, Eric Bana almost saves everything towards the end with a decent little role as the husband of Simmond's previous girlfriend. Overall though, this film is neither one thing nor the other and it’s frustrating as you think with a little more guidance from outside sources Apatow could have given us something very good indeed. Especially if that would mean exorcising the scene where Leslie Mann does a jokey Australian accent. Surely the outright winner for the most embarrassingly cringe worthy scene of the year

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
A dramedy that’s neither comic enough nor dramatic enough to sustain the attention over the unnecessarily long running time. A lot more quality control needed for next time. Rating: 4/10.