“Okay I gotta admit, that was humourous…”
Adam Sandler has two considerable gifts. One is his almost unrivaled ability to pick bad films. The other unfortunately, is that he is actually an impressive actor when he wants to be.
The latter is the only reason he isn’t lumped in with the talentless hacks of the film industry; the Tommy Wiseaus, Tyler Perrys and Rob Schneiders.
Unfortunately, he has admitted himself that he tends to pick his movies based on whether they will pay for his next holiday. As a result of this, the ones people typically rave about are few and far between. There’s Happy Gilmore and Punch-Drunk Love. More recently, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) had people suggesting we might soon be calling him Academy Award nominated actor Adam Sandler.
One of the forgotten gems hidden in the heap of steaming compost however is 2009’s Funny People, directed by Judd Apatow and the only reason you never saw Adam Sandler play the Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Yes, you read that right. If it wasn’t for Funny People, we would have seen Sandler beating a Nazi to death with a baseball bat. That role went to Hostel director Eli Roth, while Sandler decided instead to go for this slightly low-key indie comedy.
Sandler plays George Simmons, a retired stand-up comedian who has made a pretty living from deciding to reinvent himself as an actor. Battling depression, his life takes another difficult turn when he is diagnosed with acute leukemia and told his chances of survival are only 8%.
Certain he is facing death, he decides to become a stand-up comic again. While doing this he encounters a young comedy writer and stand-up named Ira (Seth Rogen), who agrees to help George write material for his planned comeback. However, as the pair become closer as friends, it soon becomes apparent that George isn’t attempting to make peace with the world. Instead, he becomes increasingly reckless as he struggles to recreate his past.
Playing off a bit of meta-humour, by getting Sandler to play a version of himself who is embarrassed by the low-brow and one-joke comedy movies that have made him rich, this is part of Funny People’s charm. It is not a comedy built on hilarious jokes. It is funny because it’s characters aren’t, despite the job description. Their jokes are exactly the opposite. You can see where they are getting at when they begin coming up with a gag, but it always misses the target.
One of the earliest examples is when Ira is bouncing ideas off his roommate Leo, played by Jonah Hill.
“You know like, so I had this joke about how, like you never see like a very attractive blonde big-breasted homeless woman, y’know like… Someone will take care of that person. No matter what, that woman is going to be fine.”
“Alright so here’s the joke”, Leo responds happily. “You can be attractive and stupid and make it in the world, and you can be unattractive and smart and make it in the world, but it’s the ugly dumb people who are really screwed, because they’re ignorant and an eyesore.”
“That’s funny, man.”
“That’s pretty funny.”
Only it’s not. You can see where they are going, but they can’t develop a decent joke.
Clip via MovieClips
Still if they seem like amateur hacks, the people who have reached some level of fame are just as bad, and often even less funny. The fact though is that a character such as Ira is too excited to notice this, because he has idolised them for their success, with George being the worst case.
Smart anti-comedy, Funny People was something of a major departure for many of the case members involved. It was a lot colder, darker and filled with intentional dead-air moreso than most of Judd Apatow’s quick-fire semi-improvised slapstick output. It was an even greater departure for Sandler, but on a more interesting note, the film acted as something of a launchpad for younger up-and-coming comedy success stories.
Included in the cast were Aziz Ansari and Aubrey Plaza, whose first season of Parks and Recreation was still only getting a very lukewarm reception. It was in fact one of Plaza’s first actual acting gigs, before she got a big break with Scott Pilgrim Versus The World. Stand-up comic Bo Burnham also makes an appearance, three year’s before he was being hyped as one of the YouTube comics capable of making millions of the platform.
It’s not always a perfect film. Definitely, some of the intentionally poor humour can be frustrating and at almost two and a half hours, you could argue Apatow could have been a bit tougher in the editing room. Nonetheless, the story and the evolution of the characters makes it worthwhile.
Judd Apatow pushed himself to do something different, and it was an experiment that worked overall. Whatever errors there were, it definitely becomes clear that he learned from them later when he returned to television properly.
Funny People was the testing ground that led to two amazing series’ he helped write and produce; Love and Girls.
Funny People is now streaming on Netflix.
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