Going into Funny People, I had the same eager excitement and anticipation that I had for many of Judd Apatow’s other projects, such as 40 Year Old Virgin, Anchorman, Knocked Up, Superbad, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Unfortunately, I did not leave the theater with the same enjoyment that I did for the previously mentioned flicks.

The basic synopsis of the film is that Adam Sandler’s character George Simmons is a mega-star comedian (much like Sandler himself) who finds out he has a rare form of leukemia and only has a limited time to live.  Simmons then finds himself trying to re-live his stand up days, and in the process hires Rogan’s character Ira Wright to go on the road with him to write jokes and be company for him in his dying days.  Eventually George finds out that he has beaten the leukemia, and the rest of the movie is supposed to be an emotional journey and revelation for not only George but Ira and the rest of the cast in trying to understand love and friendship and life.

For me, the biggest draw of the previous Apatow flicks are not only the endearing characters and foul-mouthed humor, but also the identification that the movies had with the current generation; these movies, despite possibly lacking the plot and increasing in cruel humor, are like the current generation’s Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.  Just like John Hughes in the 80s, Apatow has been able to use the same nucleus of actors (the Brat Pack in the 80s; the Seth Rogan/Jonah Hill/Jason Segal/Paul Rudd group now) to create similar style movies geared toward a specific audience.  Where the 16-25 year olds in the mid-80s could identify with one of the archetypes from the Breakfast Club (whether it was the Anthony Michael Hall’s geeky persona or Emilio Esteves’s tough, yet vulnerable jock) the same can be said for Apatow’s variety of films.

With all this in mind, Apatow’s lastest creation (which he claims to be his most personal and heartfelt) is at its core a valiant attempt to connect more with the audience on a more emotional and personal level (instead of just filling the movie with crude humor and teenage angst), it lacks the adequate level of humor to keep Apatow’s normal target audience entertained, while also failing to allow the viewer to connect emotionally at all with Sandler’s or any other character.  The only character in the movie that I found compassion for was Seth Rogan’s, and that was primarily a feeling of “I hope this is over soon enough so that he nor I have to endure more of this”.  While there were a few chuckles here and there throughout the movie, the only comedic moments that truly stuck with me were ones that required outside influence: a scene in which James Taylor and Seth Rogan’s character share a candid moment that exposes Taylor as an actual funny guy, and then a scene with Sandler and oddly enough Eminem, who uses his few minutes of actual air time to reinforce his typical “Slim Shady” persona and degrade and threaten Ray Romano while trying to instill some wisdom on Sandler’s character.

All in all, while I understood where Apatow was trying to go with the film, I felt like he just wasn’t able to make the audience laugh enough nor make us become invested and care about the characters, which is an ironic twist for a movie whose title does not fit its content.

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