Well, this is another one I can knock off my Must-See List. I had very high expectations of
Funny People long before I got around to seeing this in large part because I am a huge fan of
Judd Apatow. As always, I steered clear of any spoilers so as to come into this completely unaware. Sure, I saw the trailer when it first came out and got a sense of what the movie was about. But having just watched it now, it is nowhere near what I thought the movie would be. This turned into a big misfire.
There are a couple of things that I think
Judd failed big time with this movie and it has nothing to do with the comedy bits, but everything to do with how the script/movie was written and these problems could have easily be fixed in post and would probably have made the movie infinitely better. The first problem is, there is no clear distinction of who the main character is. Yes, you can say that the guy that gets top billing is who we are meant to follow on this journey. Theoretically yes, but when a script doesn't lay the ground rules of who we are to follow, it doesn't matter who is standing in the middle on a movie poster. I really didn't know if we were meant to follow
George Simmons (Adam Sandler) or
Ira Wright (Seth Rogen). It's the way the set up is written that ultimately confuses the viewer....i.e., me.
The other thing that cripples the movie for me is after struggling to figure out who to follow, it turns into a different movie in the second half that felt so out of place to actually draw attention to itself. I'm speaking of course about when
George pursues his former girlfriend at the risk of breaking up her family in the process. Prior to this is was all about stand-ups and jokes and beating the disease. Just not sure how this movie made it through the editing process without anyone associated with the production of the film would not see and address these issues of two completely different movies here. And while I'm at it, how come no one told
Judd that this movie was ridiculously long. For f*cks sake, I wasn't expecting a 2 1/2 hour movie. Overall, the movie just wasn't paced very well at all.
Okay, those were the bad things about the movie. I think the comedy bits, especially the off the cuff ad-libs were very funny...for the most part. There were a couple of duds that didn't work. Maybe they weren't suppose to work. But you will find some gems in there. I did like the cameos that lined this film. A lot of cameos and one incredibly odd....and very funny one at that was
Eminem. His scene with
Ray Romano was priceless, especially
Seth's punchline at
Ray's expense. "I thought everybody loved you". Haha.
Even with some funny bits and some pretty good cameos, I have to say this is a
Skip. The run time is just way too long for a film like this. It could have been so much better. Bummer, I did like
Jonah Hill in this. He had a small part and was probably my favorite in the movie. Was cool to see
Aubrey Plaza in this as well.