Making us laugh until Sprite comes out our noses is no longer enough for Judd Apatow, the guy who directed "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up." Now he wants us to cry between laughs, too.
Apatow's "Funny People" amiably attempts to elicit chuckles and sobs in alternate moments -- though, with Apatow involved, the drama is a bit tougher and the comedy a good deal raunchier.
Adam Sandler stars as George Simmons, a comedian who has grown rich on a spate of idiotic movies. But George is all alone in his big mansion, and feeling that loneliness even more when his doctor tells him he has a form of leukemia -- and that his thin chances for survival depend on experimental treatment.
George takes his self-pity to a comedy club, as he trots out some dark (and not very funny) stand-up material. Following him onstage is Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a struggling young comic who nervously riffs on George's morose act. George, insulted at first, hires Ira as a joke writer and, eventually, his personal assistant.
At first Ira is impressed with George's success and wealth, but his tenure as best-friend-for-hire -- particularly as George's illness grows worse -- shows Ira how much George has walled himself off from love and relationships. The relationship that looms largest is with ex-girlfriend Laura (played by Apatow's wife and muse, Leslie Mann), now married to an Australian businessman (Eric Bana) and raising two daughters (played by Mann and Apatow's daughters, Maude and Iris Apatow).
As Apatow (who wrote and directed) depicts them, relationships are contentious things for comedians. People who laugh through pain and cannibalize their lives for material are more likely to insult their friends -- as Ira does with his roommates, equally insecure comic Leo Koenig (Jonah Hill) and womanizing actor Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman) -- than embrace them. The same holds true in romance, as Ira's efforts to date Daisy (Aubrey Plaza, from "Parks and Recreation"), a deadpan comedian across the street, end up in angry one-liners.
Apatow doesn't harvest many laughs from George's illness. Most of the jokes come from the decidedly R-rated stand-up routines and from the satiric clips of George's bad movies ("Merman," about a half-fish character, and "Re-Do," in which George's head is digitally grafted onto a baby's body) or Mark's lame sitcom (an inner-city school cliché-fest called "Yo Teach").
Apatow's pacing is a little uneven, as he's clearly more comfortable with comedy than heavy drama -- and he does Sandler, his former roommate, no favors by making George a rather unlikable character. "Funny People" clicks best when the emphasis is on the funny, not on the people.
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