"Funny People" 
(my 0-10 rating:  7)

 

Director: Judd Apatow
Screenplay: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jason Schwartzman, Jonah Hill
Time:  2 hrs., 26 min.
Rating: R (vulgarity, continuous crude sexual humor, some graphic sexuality) 
 
     A very good movie, ruefully admitted.   

    Best appreciated as a view of a little known but entirely unattractive sub-culture called the L.A. stand-up comedy scene, "Funny People" covers its ground vigorously.  I found it an unwanted education which at first came across so obnoxiously that I almost walked out on it, but one which rapidly grows on you with a bold sense of how much growing it has to do.
     Specifically, it has you understand from the opening that this level of our complex society has incorporated into its body the verbal language of what is generally called vulgarity. It is not used for color or emphasis or accentuation, as most of us would have it, but rather as a normal part of the flow and expression of ordinary conversation. Also integrated into this everyday dialogue are continued references to penises at all stages. Never has the organ been given such continued attention in a mainstream movie.
    
     So you just have to get over all that. This is their language. You can't criticize it except to observe that in this case how sad it is that this is the best that modern intelligent people can do with the English language.
     The film rambles for a while, with Adam Sandler, a superb actor curiously dedicated to toilet humor, doing an excellent role as a man advised by his doctor that his days may be numbered. Yet there is the sense that writer-director Judd Apatow, an intense student of the natural comedy in romance frustration, does not know how to balance serious moments with crass comedy. Too often, he opts for the latter, as though he were afraid to get serious about seriousness. 
      
     The story is a general view of the stand-up comic scene in L.A.  George (Adam Sandler), a filmmaker who's gotten rich on his schlock movies, lives by himself in a palatial seaside home with indoor and outdoor pools. His social life is all about photo-ops with his adoring fans.    
     It is at this point that he is advised that he has a rare blood disorder. There is no treatment for it. With death in the offing he looks back on his life to get a clue as to what he should be doing for fulfillment. He has, he ruefully regrets, let many an enriching relationship slip away. He hates himself.
    
     Well, now comes Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) into his life. Ira is a struggling standup comic whose daytime job is at a mall deli and who sleeps on a pull-out couch in the apartment of his very successful roomies, comic Leo (Jonah Hill) and sitcom star Mark (Jason Schwartzman).  The encounter with George comes when he, George, is doing a self-criticizing monologue that is getting zero laughs. Ira's act follows. In it, he trashes George's attitude about himself. George, impressed, hires Ira to do fulltime gag-writing for him 
     
     The key thread to the plot is George's most tragic love loss in his recent past, that with Laura (Leslie Mann), for which he constantly bemoans over his own responsibility. She resurfaces, now married, with children, to a macho Australian (Eric Bana), her revisit into George's life raising ultimate confusion for her over where her romance is grounded.
     The film had taken a commendable risk in going for an almost two-and-a-half hour length. The theme, as it's treated here, has been pretty well established over the decades as a less-than-two-hours item. But it has confidence in itself that the personalities will carry it, and they do. Leslie Mann, especially, is absolutely fascinating in her performance.  And Seth Rogen tries very hard at his timing in intricately involving moments. Jonah Hill is also a gem as the pudgy, unrealized gag-writing talent who expresses himself with a natural comic thrust. 
     Forget, if you can, the "foul" language.  It's just there, an in-house tongue that's s standard of verbal communication.
     The number and variety of issues dealt with are impressive and eventually of quality.