Funny People

The name of a work of art can often set unreasonable expectations for what follows. Viewers who enter "There Will Be Blood," for example, might be forgiven for anticipating a nearly three hour splatter-fest, rather than an atmospheric meditation on greed and the dark side of humanity.

However, is it so unforgivable to expect a movie called "Funny People" to be funny? The title, after all, promises at least a modicum of comedy. However, humor is not something "Funny People" offers during its bloated running length, instead synthesizing several cliche-ridden storylines from other, better films while simultaneously presenting career-worst performances from the primary actors, insipid storytelling, awful dialogue and terrible writing. In a year full of disappointing, overlong films, "Funny People" might very well represent the rock-bottom.

The film opens promisingly enough: unfunny comedian Adam Sandler is dying. Well, his fictional equivalent, George Simmons, is at least. George has been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and only has a few months to live. However, perhaps this is best for poor George; despite his massive success as a Rob Schneider-style actor in lowbrow, high-concept comedies, cavernous mansion, and legions of adoring fans, the star is bored with life and unimpressed by his own success.

As part of the cliched steps of acceptance every poorly written film character must undergo if they're dying, George attempts to get back in touch with his roots before he shuffles off this mortal coil. This consists of him watching shaky handheld footage of early prank calls he made as a teenager and revisiting old standup haunts where he started his career. It's at one of these standup nights that George meets Ira (Seth Rogen), a struggling comedian who, like George, isn't funny, yet has fooled the world into believing he is with cheap laughs and stupid voices.

George, unhappy with crying into his comfy millions, enlists Ira as an assistant-cum-confidante with whom he can spend his final days. Ira begins writing jokes for George, travels with him to corporate events, mingles with celebrities and groupies to bask second-hand in George's radiant glory and generally engages in activities the couch-surfing barnacle could never have dreamt he would have the chance to do. Ira also assists George in reconnecting with people with whom the comedian has lost touch during his selfish pursuit of stardom, including Laura (Leslie Mann), George's former fiancee and "the one who got away." When the battery of experimental drugs George has been on miraculously cures his disease, George's life becomes an obsessive quest to win Laura back.

Nevermind that the "winning the unattainable girl" plot has been a staple of just about every romantic comedy since the advent of cinema, but Sandler himself has aped this formula in pretty much all of his movies, from "Billy Madison" to "The Wedding Singer." One could be forgiven for assuming a Judd Apatow (who wrote and directed) film might break new ground with its storytelling, but "Funny People" is just lazy. Whether it's the self-loathing celebrity's quest for real-world validation (done earlier and better in films like "Adaptation") or a larger-than-life personality's attempts to make things right before his death (borrowed from superior fare like "Big Fish" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"), this movie does not contain one halfway original thought in its over two-hour running length. At times, it even feels like Apatow is stealing from himself: the scenes where George and Ira ham-handedly interact with Laura's dim husband (Eric Bana) and kids (played by the filmmaker's own children) are painfully reminiscent of similar sequences from "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up."

"Funny People" is yet another tired example of Apatow keeping it in the family. Former stars of the filmmaker's prior projects are strewn throughout this wasteland of poor casting. Along with Rogen and Mann (who have appeared in all of Apatow's prior directorial efforts), regulars like Jonah Hill and Carla Gallo also pop up. And, to add insult to injury, self-indulgent cameos from other unfunny comedians playing themselves, such as Justin Long, Andy Dick and Sarah Silverman, are ubiquitous. When a foul-mouthed cameo from Eminem is the highlight of a film, something is plainly wrong with the movie's execution.

Until now, it seemed that Apatow and his stock company of actors and filmmakers simply remade the same staid formula: arrested development-afflicted man-children face some sort of dilemma or crisis and are forced to grow up. Whether that predicament involved sexual anxiety, an unexpected pregnancy or homicidal drug dealers was left to the limited imagination of the principles involved. "Funny People" serves as the example of what happens when Apatow is forced to update that formula with actual adults. Suffice to say, it doesn't work. George might be in his 40s, but he's every bit as childish as the twenty-somethings he fraternizes with, leading to awkward sequences where Sandler talks to Rogen and company like children when he himself has obviously not emotionally matured beyond the age of seven. The misplaced intergenerational tone is further undermined by the ghastly choice to allow Sandler to drag out every obnoxious voice he has used in his career in the space of one feature film. If you just couldn't get enough of the actor's "characters" from "Eight Crazy Nights," "Funny People" is the film that will truly try your patience for Sandler's vocal stupidity.

Not only is "Funny People" a horrible, horrible movie in its own right, it also represents something despicable about the industry that spawned it, increasing the film's hateability immensely. It was made in the deepest throes of the economic crisis, and the stagnation continues to this day. Both 2008 and 2009 have been relatively lean movie years, thanks not only to the global economy but the writers' strike before it. This has led most major studios to a strange type of frugality where they release only the most expensive, sure-fire box office hits in the hopes of making more money per movie. Overall, though, what it has really led to is a dearth of new, creative concepts making it to the big screen. Hollywood has always been relatively bereft of good ideas, but the last couple of years demonstrate compelling evidence that Tinseltown has declared intellectual bankruptcy. There are only two types of movies being produced these days, it seems: big-budget action fare and high-concept "comedies" such as "Funny People." The fact that crap like this is getting greenlighted while other, better, original scripts languish in "we-can't-market-this" hell is a testament to just how wrong things are in the cinematic world these days.