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August 6 - August 12, 2009
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Funny bone
by Michael Phillips
Shrinkage
by Michael Phillips
 Funny bone
by Michael Phillips
Funny People is 50 percent good and 50 percent close. I am a huge, huge fan of screenwriter Judd Apatow’s previous directorial efforts, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, which are commercial as all get-out but non-formulaic and side-trippy enough to be interesting. Most of Apatow’s characters think, talk and one-up each other like L.A. comedy writers, whatever they do for a living; in Funny People the characters are comedians.
The film finds Apatow digging into the question of what makes these charismatically desperate guys (and the too-occasional female) do what they do, and what the need to slay every second means when it comes to coexisting on the same planet with others. Funny People is also an attempt by Apatow to reconcile the huge success he has become with the up-and-comer he once was. The results run an increasingly exasperating 2.5 hours. All the same, the work has some life to it — not necessarily directorial life (Apatow’s pretty stodgy in that department), but in its ensemble expertise.
Comic turned movie star George Simmons, played by Adam Sandler, leads a fabulous life but not a full one. Emotionally he’s numb (we hear of a rough childhood and a lifelong attempt to win his father’s approval), gliding through bantamweight affairs with pliable one-offs. George regrets above all that he cheated on the one who got away, played by Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, married with children in Marin County, Calif.
George receives bad news early in Funny People, in the form of a rare strain of leukemia. The clock ticks. He must change his ways and reconnect with those he has sealed off from his life. George’s new assistant and “additional material” man, a struggling L.A. comic played by Seth Rogen, acts as his apprentice, his sounding board and his punching bag.
The sections of this picture that come most easily to Apatow remind you of similar scenes in Virgin and Knocked Up. Rogen’s Ira Wright is the pullout-couch-roommate of a fellow comic played by Jonah Hill, a long, ingratiating way from his manic-motormouth Superbad mode. Their pad also houses an actor (Jason Schwartzman) who has scored the lead in an appalling sitcom called Yo Teach. As relationally clueless offstage as he is eager to discuss his masturbatory habits onstage, Ira is sweet on a fellow comic played by Aubrey Plaza (too small a role for such a promisingly dry actress).
For every familiar joke about the menacing brand of English spoken by a Scandinavian doctor (Tortsen Voges), there’s an unexpectedly fruitful one-liner concerning, for example, Mr. Belvedere. The film comes dangerously close to stalling, however, once George and Ira visit George’s ex, stuck in an untrustworthy marriage (Eric Bana plays Mann’s husband). By the time Ira implores “Can we just go?” you feel the same way.
The cast includes cameos from half of the world of comedy (Ray Romano, Sarah Silverman, Paul Reiser, etc.). Sandler and particularly Rogen are up to the limited dramatic and comic challenges they’re given. Next time, though — and anyone with Virgin and Knocked Up on his three-film résumé makes you eager for what’s next — I’d like to find out what Apatow really thinks of the comedy world and the comedy psyche, and of passive-aggressive mixed blessings like George. Warts and all. Funny People is oddly wart-free.
—MCT
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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 Shrinkage
by Michael Phillips
I’m not his manager, but I wonder if Kevin Spacey would profit from laying off the sardonic, disaffected, emotionally numb characters for a while. They’re criminally easy for him at this point in his career. In Shrink, a Los Angeles-set indie pushing the theory that every narcissist in Hollywood is really a pussycat underneath, the two-time Oscar winner portrays Carter, best-selling self-help book author and therapist to the stars. His wife’s suicide has left him numb and smoking even more weed than usual. Life is a cycle of self-medication and middle-distance staring, accompanied by ambient guitar riffs on the soundtrack.
By day he fakes interest in his twitchy clients, including an A-list action star (Robin Williams) and an obsessive-compulsive agent (Dallas Roberts). Saffron Burrows, who struggles a bit to suggest a small-town Ohio girl made good, plays the actress-wife of a cheating musician, also seeing the doctor for couples counseling. A sweet but duplicitous valet-cum-screenwriter (Mark Webber), who is distantly related to Carter, steals one of the shrink’s patient files and cooks up a screenplay based on a patient’s travails. Underhanded? Yes, but in Hollywood all is forgiven if you have real talent and a big heart.
This brings us to 15-year-old Keke Palmer, the brightest aspect of this low-wattage ensemble piece. She plays the teenager whose story catches the interest of the screenwriter. The girl’s mother’s suicide has left her despondent and, in various ways, at risk.
Clearly, she and Carter have a lot to learn from one another. The script of Shrink, written by Thomas Moffett, plays like Crash without the angst or the perpetual racial conflagrations. The movie ties everything and everyone together with extreme neatness, settling for a mosaiclike treatment of a town full of fabulous loneliness where anything is possible, yet nothing is believable.
Only Palmer cuts through the facile surface, with her emotional candor and dramatic tact. She’s excellent, and not just for her age. If she can continue growing as an actress — she played the protagonist in Akeelah and the Bee three years ago — she’ll be in great shape for the road ahead. And if Spacey, who spends a lot of his creative energy running the Old Vic Theatre in London, can find a film role or two to challenge himself and shake up his resume, then we’ll be reminded, once again, of how sharp he really is.
—MCT
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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