Stand Up and Deliver (Published 2009) (2024)

Comedy is always serious business, whether the joke is on the funnyman with the pie in the kisser or the woman trying, really trying, to fall for the schnook who didn’t use the condom. “Funny People,” the latest from Judd Apatow, the director of the hit comedies “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and a prolific producer, is being pitched as a bid at gravity, earnestness, adulthood, whatever. It’s an angle that sounds as if it had been cooked up by a studio flack to explain how words like divorce and death got tangled in with all the penis (and thereabouts) jokes. But the only difference is that now Mr. Apatow also seems lethally serious about being Judd Apatow.

“Funny People,” which he wrote and directed, stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a onetime stand-up nobody who has become fantastically successful by starring in the kind of crummy high-concept Hollywood comedies — in one, he plays an adult with the body of a baby — that have been the creative ruin of Eddie Murphy.

Shortly after the movie opens, George learns that he has a rare, almost certainly fatal blood disease. Shaken up, he returns home and watches images of himself on five television screens in his mansion, a nice touch for any professional narcissist. He also pursues an experimental treatment and hires an assistant, a fledgling Los Angeles stand-up, Ira (Seth Rogen).

The first section of “Funny People” buzzes along on George and Ira’s relationship and the modestly comic, often unsettling give and take between the famous and the not famous, which in Hollywood terms means the powerful and the weak. Ira is flattered by the attention, but he’s hungry too. He wants a piece of the other man’s show-business action, which, as is evident in one pathetic scene of two hot numbers turned on by George’s fame, is the only action he has hopes of getting.

Neutered in spirit, he might not service his boss sexually, like those two eager stargazers — I have a boyfriend, one woman announces to Ira, right before heading off with George — but he nonetheless assumes the assistant’s requisite submissive position.

Mr. Rogen, who has blown up professionally and slimmed down physically since his breakout role in “Knocked Up” two years ago, makes a cute puppy. He tags after George, loyally wagging his tail and begging for scraps, which is what he receives. When he writes jokes for George’s appearance at a MySpace corporate event, he earns $1,000 as his headlining boss pockets the $299,000 balance. Like the backstage scenes of stand-up comics anxiously swapping phony compliments and phonier insults, the MySpace scene conveys the surreality of the celebrity circuit in which name personalities are trotted out for pricey dog and pony entertainment. (MySpace sponsored a contest where the prize was a walk-on role in the movie.)

The stand-up scenes, with their bad lighting and air of flop-sweat, have the sting of truth. But they are also disappointingly brief, while the onstage routines, with the exception of one of Ira’s bits about being a polite womanizer, are neither especially funny nor memorable. The deep rituals of the comedy circuit aren’t really the point here, as becomes clear as Mr. Apatow forges into increasingly sticky territory, lavishing time on George’s contrition tour as he unconvincingly mends fences with his estranged family and socializes with equal opportunity comedy offenders like Sarah Silverman and Norm Macdonald. (Eminem, as himself, trumps those jokers by threatening to beat up the real Ray Romano.) Then George reaches out to an old lover, the laughs give way to tears and this promising comedy bloats, sags and dies.

That rekindled flame, Laura, is played by Mr. Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, a brittle, lightweight comic talent who giggles and flutters right on cue, widening her eyes at George with obligatory adoration. She’s fine, but the gushy romance she brings with her is a drag. As is true of almost all the female characters in Mr. Apatow’s movies, Laura’s role is to help George grow up, to get out of both his own head and insular masculine world. Yet while this dynamic worked in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and to a lesser extent in “Knocked Up,” in this movie the romantic complications are primarily situational: she’s married. Honor, rather than George’s ego (it isn’t in remission) stands in their way, which gives him — and Mr. Apatow — an easy out.

That’s too bad because while Mr. Sandler doesn’t have the necessary acting technique or even the natural warmth to convince you that his character cares about anyone else, he is undeniably a star, the movie’s biggest draw and its most effective and powerful presence. It’s easy to buy him as both a selfish jerk and a maudlin self-pitier, whether George is weeping alone into his designer sheets or confiding some medical news to his housekeeper, the only sympathetic ear around. With his flatline drone, stand-and-deliver gestural performance and prickliness, Mr. Sandler is effortlessly charmless, and in his performance you see the risky movie this might have been if Mr. Apatow had pushed harder.

There’s something irritatingly self-satisfied about “Funny People,” which explains why, though it glances on the perils of fame, it mostly affirms its pleasures. Part of this stems from the autobiographical touches. George doesn’t double for Mr. Apatow, though the filmmaker’s sympathies keep the character on the safe side. But this is Mr. Apatow’s world, his friends, his wife. His and Ms. Mann’s daughters even play Laura’s children. If the fear of death haunts George only briefly it isn’t only because his disease goes on hiatus, it’s also because Mr. Apatow seems to have become uncomfortable with or perhaps immune to the messiness of life. This, he seems to be saying, is as good as it gets, and man, is it ever good. He’s sentimentalized himself.

That’s nice, I suppose, but nice can be murder on comedy and drama alike. (Comedy is a man in trouble, not a man at peace with himself.) It’s telling that when Mr. Apatow isn’t trying to get in touch with George’s (gentler, kinder) feelings, the movie pleasurably pops. The scenes, for instance, of Ira and his greedily ambitious friends, the globular Leo (Jonah Hill) and ramrod-straight Mark (Jason Schwartzman), who together form a walking, talking exclamation point, have a lightness of touch and palpable warmth. They’re also seamlessly, easily comic because of the push-pull between the friends’ ambition and camaraderie, their hopes for one another and their competitive ruthlessness. Watching “Funny People,” you get the sense that Mr. Apatow, one of the most successful filmmakers working in Hollywood, is very happy. Bummer.

“Funny People” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Penis, penis, penis!

FUNNY PEOPLE

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by Judd Apatow; director of photography, Janusz Kaminski; edited by Brent White and Craig Alpert; music by Michael Andrews and Jason Schwartzman; production designer, Jefferson Sage; produced by Mr. Apatow, Clayton Townsend and Barry Mendel; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.

WITH: Adam Sandler (George Simmons), Seth Rogen (Ira Wright), Leslie Mann (Laura), Eric Bana (Clarke), Jonah Hill (Leo), Jason Schwartzman (Mark), Aubrey Plaza (Daisy), Robert Diggs a k a RZA (Chuck), Aziz Ansari (Randy) and Iris and Maude Apatow (Ingrid and Mable).