Dunk Films - by Christopher Waldeck

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Funny People Review

August 1st 2009 03:58

This movie was a mix of greatness and disappointment for me. I'm used to great Judd Apatow movies from The 40 Year Old Virgin to Knocked Up, and several of his producing credits. However, this film was more of his unique raunchy humor with a darker and more realistic feel to it. This film resembled Judd Apatow's stand up memories a lot as he roomed with Adam Sandler so it was almost destined for these two to combine to make a movie about stand up comedy. This film starred Sandler as George Simmons a comedian who discovers that he has a disease and that he is going to die so he starts to hire a prospective standup comedian named Ira played by Seth Rogen to write jokes for him. This is the great part of the movie as it shows the odd relationship between the two personalities. Ira wants to help George, but George is seeing Ira as only a job assistant and cares more for himself. This was a great hour and a half of the movie. Rogen and Sandler work incredibly well together especially with the theme of possibly dying and raunchy stand up comedy of an older generation passing the torch to a younger generation. It even had priceless cameos by many other celebrities including Eminem and Sarah Silverman.

Then the film intertwines more plot holes between Ira and his roommates which is funny, but not fully coherent with the story plus the story line with Sandler trying to reunite with his ex love who still loves him, but is married to a rich australian man. His ex is played wonderfully by Leslie Mann, but it feels prolonged and unnecessary, though Eric Bana is quite hilarious as her Australian husband. This dragged the film on a bit and felt like it was an overbooked wrestling pay per view with too many different directions and humor that doesn't last up until the end because it begins to feel recycled. I respect Judd Apatow for his attempt, but sadly it doesn't live up to as much hype as I had for it, but it's still a good movie nevertheless. Adam Sandler hasn't been this good in ages and he even spoofs his worst movie roles which is a good sign of being a good sport about it. He and seth Rogen need more movies together as well as jonah hill and Jason Schwartzman who were both great as usual. Judd Apatow still manages a good film just a bit overlong and frustratingly overwritten at times.

my review
B

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