CityLife

Funny People

THE title of Judd Apatow’s new comedy, his follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, isn’t supposed to be ironic.

What could be more perfect for a film immersed in the world of stand-up and its neurotic performers than Funny People?

However, there’s nothing remotely ’funny ha-ha’ about Apatow’s third feature behind the camera, his most autobiographical picture yet, based on his early years writing jokes for other comedians.

The warmth that Apatow lavished upon characters in his earlier work deserts him, as does the deft touch for dialogue, and we’re left with almost two-and-a-half hours of self-indulgent navel gazing.

And when that navel is full of inconsequential fluff, spouted by protagonists who we find neither interesting nor endearing, the unwieldy running time feels infinitely longer sitting there in the cinema.

Self-obsessed People, Vapid People or Thoroughly Dislikeable People would have been far more honest titles.

Funny People is a coming of middle-age story about a lonely, embittered man gifted a second chance at life.

Stand-up comic turned film actor George Simmons (Sandler) has a string of box-office successes to his name, including Mer-Man, Love Is In The Err, Re-Do and My Best Friend’s A Robot co-starring Owen Wilson.

A routine visit to the doctor culminates in shocking news: George has a rare and inoperable form of leukaemia and has only a slim chance of beating the disease.

So he prepares for his final days and hires wet-behind-the-ears performer Ira Wright (Rogen) to pen him gags for some forthcoming corporate events.

Blossoms

The relationship blossoms into something approaching friendship.

When the doctors joyfully tell George that his body has miraculously defeated the disease, the funny man is faced with exciting choices about the path of his life, and they all lead to old flame Laura (Mann) who is now happily settled with two daughters and a macho Australian husband, Clarke (Bana).

Funny People is a bore, pitching haphazardly for laughs at the expense of plausibility.

There’s no way that George would hire Ira, based on his disastrous performance late one night, and we’re perplexed why Laura would ever have fallen in love with such a schmuck.

Ira’s romantic subplot with wannabe stand-up Daisy (Plaza) is tepid, cheapened by the rivalry with cocky room-mate Mark (Schwartzman), who threatens, “If you don’t have sex with Daisy in 10 days, I will!”

Apatow peppers scenes with cameos from real-life stand-ups including Andy Dick, Charles Fleischer, Norm MacDonald, Paul Reiser and Sarah Silverman.

However, British audiences will struggle to recognise half of these performers playing themselves.

A throwaway restaurant scene involving rap star Eminem and Ray Romano, star of sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, epitomises the rest of the film: overlong and uncomfortably devoid of laughs.

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