“Funny People” screened last night in New York at the Museum of the Moving Image with an hour long Q&A and the always affable Judd Apatow in attendance (more on that later… possibly) and The Playlist was there. What did we think? Here’s some thoughts in brief.
From: [redacted]
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:02 PM
To: The Playlist
RE: Funny People, well?Hmm, It’s really great at first, halfway through you’re thinking, “This is his best film,” really funny, tremendously enjoyable and the crowd was really with it.
But the lengths he takes to build the characters and story bite him in the ass in the end, because when he reaches the last turning point at the 3/4 mark, it feels like there’s 45 minutes left to go, to resolve and wrap-up the story. And he really couldn’t have cut much more at that point or he would of seriously compromised the last act, which isn’t all that strong (then again he could have simply trimmed throughout, even though the first half only seems long in retrospect and is quite terrific overall).
I’d give probably give it a B, cause it’s pretty much a winning Apatow film for about more than half of the picture (around 2/3rd’s), but it does drag and get long winded. It buckles under the weight of its ambitions. To use a random baseball metaphor: he pitches a great game, but he can’t close well. It’s not a successful film from front to back, but there are some great scenes – tender, genuine and humanistic moments (he’s really great at this stuff). Plus some consistently funny stretches, but by the time Eric Bana enters the picture you’re spent and the film doesn’t seem to know where to go next.
If anyone complains about scenes with music that go on too long, they wouldn’t be wrong either (nice Jon Brion cameo, but necessary? No). The “kids” montages are nice, but he needed an editor for some other scenes. I think the best way to put it is that Apatow takes a strong idea and paints himself into a corner with it. Nice to see Eminem’s appearance be more than just a cameo and actually a pretty important second-act turning point. He does a great job of presenting seriously flawed characters that are selfish assholes, but not totally unpleasnent either, and he doesn’t let them off the hook or forgive their mistakes.
Don’t get it twisted; it’s not a bad film and I might say I loved a lot of it. It’s not without its imperfections, but I would still recommend it.
A review later this week or the next, depending on time. We just wanted to tap something out and that seemed to give a good overall picture.
Wholeheartedly agreed… funny, I turned to a baseball metaphor to describe it as well: Felt like Judd saw a fat pitch and had the chance to hit it out of the park, but instead got a ground-rule double.
I'm confused about the promo angle. The HBO special was 29 minutes of stand up and 1 minute of "guy thinks he's dying and the girl that got away." The TV ads seem lackluster, and not sure which way to go. I'm Judd fan #1, but not loving the buildup to this one.
I posted earlier on an older entry, but thought I'd quickly re-post…
Simply put, I thought this movie was pretty terrible. I felt it was totally pretentious & way too long. I too agree that the movie (or Apatow) didn't seem to know what it wanted to be & I think that seriously hurt it. Way too insider-y as well. Like if you're not in the comedy or entertainment industry you might not get a lot of it… or at least care about it. Plus 3/4 of the movie seemed to be dick jokes. Couldn't they do any better? Come on! (Did I mention it was pretentious?!)
I thought that Eminem scene was TERRIBLE!
I was really looking forward to this one & I loved Apatow's other films (even though I didn't think I would), but I'm going to tell my friends to stay FAR away from this one, if possible!
Dude's on a mission. There's about 30 other Funny People posts you can write the same thing in if you like. 😉
But i agree, there were too many dick jokes. Some where funny though. I thought Jonah Hill and Schwartzman were great.