FUNNY PEOPLE

UNIVERSAL 

RELEASED 28 August 2009

Writer/director Judd Apatow’s third film (after ‘The 40-Year Old Virgin’ and ‘Knocked Up’) is a slightly more sombre, reflective affair. Stand-up comedian and huge film star George Simmons (Adam Sandler) has just discovered he has a rare form of leukemia, and after a maudlin appearance at a stand-up nightclub, he hires promising comic Ira (Seth Rogen) to hang out with him and write him new material. George has also taken a shine to Ira and welcomes his friendship as he begins to re-evaluate his life and look-up friends and family who he’s lost contact with because of his own ‘superstar’ arrogance.

Slightly long (twenty minutes over two hours), but my biggest fear of the movie getting syrupy and sentimental didn’t happen. It’s consistently funny (a doctor that is the spitting image of the Scandinavian blonde baddie from ‘Die Hard’, Eric Bana showing a huge talent for comedy) and the movie doesn’t put a foot wrong. Sandler pretty much takes the piss out of his career and in the process gives the best performance I’ve seen from him, Seth Rogen is the new slimmed-down version, and there are some amusing real-life cameos. Filmed by Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List), ‘Funny People’ also looks better than any comedy deserves too. A thoughtful ‘dram-edy’.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE