{"id":1217,"date":"2009-08-05T11:43:09","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T17:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2009-12-28T11:45:07","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T17:45:07","slug":"funny-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"Funny People"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As I mentioned quite recently, I\u2019ve never seen a full-on Judd Apatow movie. Well,\u00a0had<\/em> never, at least. But, last night I caught\u00a0Funny People<\/a>. I can say without reservation that the movie had a significant number of funny people in it. Despite that, I\u2019m pretty sure the goal of the title was irony. Because, as funny as it was, both in the stand-up segments and the main story segments, the bulk of the movie showed people wronging themselves and each other in ways both blunt and subtle, and only sporadically taking away hard lessons on how to be better. I think it had to be a comedy, not because Apatow and Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler are known for comedy, but because if you remove the regular doses of humor,\u00a0Funny People\u00a0would be slit-your-wrists cinema.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rogen stars as his increasingly common, and increasingly likeable, schlubby everyman, this time an aspiring comedian trying and mostly failing to work his way into the Hollywood scene. His life changes dramatically when his set follows that of a famous comedian, played by Sandler, who has just learned he is probably going to die of [let’s say] Robert Jordan\u2019s Disease and then flubs his first public stand-up routine in years, due to his dark mood. Rogen takes advantage of the situation to get some fairly cheap laughs at Sandler\u2019s expense, whereupon the comedian decides to hire Rogen as a writer and assistant, and most importantly, as the sole bearer of the knowledge of Sandler\u2019s illness and probable death. Occasional digressions into Rogen\u2019s personal life are interesting from a character development perspective but mostly serve to remove focus from the chemistry between the old and young comedians, their growing friendship, and the lessons that each is taking from the other. And then, as the previews made perfectly clear, Sandler\u2019s disease goes into unexpected remission, and he decides to embrace the second chance he has been given in pretty much the worst ways imaginable, while Rogen is left the impossible task of damage control.<\/span><\/p>\n

It really is a very funny movie. I said that and I meant it. And a lot of the time, it\u2019s funny like things that are funny, and that\u2019s pretty sweet. But sometimes, it\u2019s funny like watching a crash between a car full of clowns and a limo full of midgets, which crash has happened in full view of the Special Ed bus. You can\u2019t look away and you know you\u2019re going to hell, and there\u2019s a voice inside you desperately trying to convince you that those kids are going to have nightmares for months, that midgets are totally people, and that clowns\u2026 well, okay, the clowns are probably better off. But you still choke out laughter, because you can\u2019t not. That kind of funny, is, y\u2019know, probably less good in large doses.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned quite recently, I\u2019ve never seen a full-on Judd Apatow movie. Well,\u00a0had never, at least. But, last night I caught\u00a0Funny People. I can say without reservation that the movie had a significant number of funny people in it. Despite that, I\u2019m pretty sure the goal of the title was irony. Because, as funny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[444,445,420,446,424,447,448,449,450,451,452,453,454,455],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-a-significant-number-of-funny-people","tag-adam-sandler","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-judd-apatow","tag-like-watching-a-crash-between-a-car-full-of-clowns-and-a-limo-full-of-midgets","tag-nightmares-for-months","tag-people-wronging-themselves","tag-robert-jordans-disease","tag-schlubby-everyman","tag-seth-rogen","tag-slit-your-wrists-cinema","tag-titular-irony","tag-you-know-youre-going-to-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}