Death and the Comedian

Judd Apatow's Funny People is his most mature — and unfocused — film yet.

by Shaun Brady

ORDINARY PEOPLE: Adam Sandler plays a movie star dying of cancer who hires Seth Rogen as a lackey — and friend.

[ City Paper Grade: B+ ]

Who says there's nothing funny about the tears of a clown? Judd Apatow's latest marries his brand of raunchy platonic male relationship comedy with a second-chance-at-life weepie (also of the testosterone-fueled variety), to create his most mature — if also most sprawling and unfocused — film to date.

Adam Sandler stars as George Simmons, a successful Adam Sandler-ish movie star diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Facing death and short on anything resembling an actual friend, he hires struggling comic Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) as joke-writer, personal assistant and general confidant.

It sounds like the perfect recipe for a mawkish redemption tale, but while Apatow has never been afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, he's also the first to undercut sentiment with a dick joke or 12. George Simmons isn't exactly the type to generate much sympathy; he's selfish and mercurial, given to outbursts of anger or generosity, but with the master manipulator's sense of control.

Apatow gets a stunning performance out of Sandler, his old college roommate. The glimpses we see of his films — dreck like Merman or Re-Do — are knives-out parodies of the actor's stock in trade, while he plays, perhaps for the first time, an actual human being. The part is tinged with the darkness and violence which Paul Thomas Anderson drew on for Punch Drunk Love, mixed with a from-the-inside view of celebrity: self-pitying, voracious, cynical.

Peopled with comedians — Rogen's roommates are fellow standup Jonah Hill and sitcom star Jason Schwartzman, while a host of actual comics from Andy Dick to Paul Reiser to Sarah Silverman pop in for cameos — the film is at its best when it reveals the way in which humor becomes the sole means of relating for these always-on types. Jokes serve as bonding device, defense mechanism, confessional. The recurring standup segments serve the same function as the song-and-dance numbers in a good musical, entertaining unto themselves while obliquely adding depth to the characters.

Which is why the film derails somewhat when it leaves that world, as Sandler heads off to reunite with his lost love. Suddenly, we're in a different film (Eric Bana appears for the first time nearly two hours in). There are truths here, too, about the false promise of the could have been and the allure of the easy way out, but they're trapped in overlong domestic scenes, not coincidentally featuring the director's wife, Leslie Mann, and their two children. Apatow is always undisciplined, but most of his shapeless narratives feel as rumpled and comfortable as an old T-shirt; when Mann pops in a tape of one of the kids performing a song from Cats, we're supposed to mist up with her, but it's hard not to side with Sandler as he distractedly checks his e-mails.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Funny People | Directed by Judd Apatow. A Universal Pictures Release. Opens in area theaters Friday.