First, let me say that I am not an Adam Sandler fan. In fact, I don't really care for him at all. I actively disliked him when he was on Saturday Night Live and the trailers for his early movies made me cringe. So why did we see this movie? We'd see and liked two previous Adam Sandler movies, The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates. Both of these were with Drew Barrymore which helped. But Sandler was good in these movies as well. We'd seen the trailers for Funny People and thought we'd like it. Since it got a good review in the local paper we decided to see it.
Although this movie has Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, it is not really a comedy. There are a lot of laughs (many of the characters play stand-up comedians) and a lot of humor in the situations. But, at heart, this is a serious movie about George Simmons, a shallow but successful comedian and movie star (Sandler) and how he approaches a deadly illness. Sandler plays a lot of it straight and believable. Rogen plays, Ira Wright, a struggling comedian who attracts Simmons' attention and becomes his assistant. If you've seen the trailers you know that much. Then of course, there's Laura (Leslie Mann), the ex-girlfriend who got away. Now married (not very happily) to Clarke (Eric Bana). How that all works out is not in the trailers but is the real heart of the story.Eric Bana, last seen as Nero the Romulan in Star Trek, is pretty good with an outrageous Australian accent in this. It's nice to see he's not going to be saddled with evil alien parts. He's also in The Time Travelers Wife so perhaps he'll get typecast as a time traveler.
Please don't take the kids to see Funny People. There are a lot of adult jokes in this movie that I wouldn't want to have to explain to someone who didn't get them. In fact, if you have an aversion to strong language maybe you'd better stay home yourself.
1 comment:
Sandler's amusing in small doses. It gets to be a bit much after that.
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