Funny People

Judd Apatow appears to be the King of the Comedy Genre with a Capital G. 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and now Funny People.

Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jason Schwartzman and the gloriously hilarious Leslie Mann, I was expecting a wonderfully funny movie.

I love Adam, we started together in NY and then were both rejected in L.A. by that Comedy Store cow Mitzi-I-have-a head-wound-Shore and must wear a turban even when I shower.

Adam stars as famous comic George Simmons who is dying of some disease no one has ever heard of, like Horseradish Mashed Potato Disease, only it's not that because I would have gotten it by now. AND

B(EATEN) IT to death with my spoon.

Adam can do comedy and drama and his vulnerability in both is remarkable. Apatow's irl wife, Leslie Mann, plays Laura, the long lost love of Sandler. Seth Rogen plays Ira/Schmira, another standup who helps Sandler on the road to emotional recovery. He too does a great job crossing the divide from funny into drama, as comedians can always do drama but serious actors falter with comedy (cough) Jeff (cough) Goldblum. Rogen starts out fat in the film and then loses weight, which no one notices or mentions except me, who kept mumbling that to myself much to the chagrin of the chubby woman sitting next to me.

Leslie Mann is the great undiscovered comedian of the United States, like Isla Fisher is in England. Actually I don't know if Isla is English but for this review she is. Aubrey Plaza, as Daisy, is another comedic all star and Apatow really has an eye for finding funny women and bringing the best out of them.

Eric Bana, playing Leslie's husband, is good in his role but seriously, who cares? Put Jane Lynch in drag and make her play the husband. (the floor manager in Virgin and now on Glee)

The movie is too long, by at least 8 minutes. The opening is funny but repetitive. It sets up the SNL juvenile comedy of Sandler, and does, brilliantly, but the rule of threes is seriously misplayed, which I don't think is a word but is for this review. Another sequence with disaster written all over it is when actual standups gather to make Sandler laugh. Charles Fleisher, Sarah Silverman and the usually funny George Wallace have close-up cameos that are so not funny one could only believe they needed the gig to qualify for an extra year of SAG insurance. What surprise cameos there are I will leave for you to discover.

That entire scene does not move the plot forward and should have been left out or done in analog because HD does not like certain people's faces 10 feet tall and spilling onto their sweater vests with food chunks popping out of their nasolabial lines. labiaL, guys, with an L.

There are 4,670 swear words, mostly concerning man's best friend, his cock and balls. Why don't they just marry them and get it over with? I put in this caveat for those of you who are squeamish and would rather watch lolcats.

And I want to thank Apatow for forgetting to ask me to be in his movie. The fact that I don't know him or he me should not make a difference. If I'm good enough for Seinfeld, Michael Patrick King and Larry David, I should be good enough for you, Judd. If I sound like Max Alexander begging for a kidney, then start the Propofol drip.

So I guess Mitzi Shore made the right choice. Adam has to get up early, spend 15 hours on a set each day of a shoot, make lots of money and I get to sit at my computer naked and spew venom day and night. Tough luck, Adam.

Grade: B+