I don't have problems with a director being self-indulgent. Really, I don't. I'm a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino, after all, and it doesn't get much more self-indulgent than that. But Judd Apatow -- director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up -- sinks so far into self-indulgence with Funny People that I felt like I was drowning in a vat of liquid ego. It doesn't help that the movie's essentially two movies crammed awkwardly together to make it two-and-a-half hours long. Judd Apatow has a worse self-editing problem than Mel Gibson.
The first half is about an aspiring stand-up comic named Ira (Seth Rogan) who takes a job as assistant and joke writer for multimillionaire comic George Simmons (Adam Sandler). George has a seemingly incurable disease, and he's taking a break from making terrible Sandler-esque movies (wait, is there any other kind?) to hit the stand-up circuit again.
When the movie sticks to the Ira-George relationship, Funny People really sings. Apatow and Sandler, longtime friends, know the world of struggling comics well, and the strange bond that the older, successful comedian forges with the young up-and-comer is awkward, funny and touching. One throwaway moment in particular, when George pays Ira $1,000 for writing jokes for a gig that paid George $300,000 -- and Ira's thrilled to get it -- tells more about show business than 50 other movies combined.
But Apatow wasn't satisfied with that, oh no. In the second half, George reconnects with his now-married ex-fiancée, Laura, and spends a few days that feel literally like a few days at her home with her children. Just when you thought we’d be done with it already, hubby (Eric Bana) shows up and we have to watch a whole 'nother half-hour of mistimed farce. And making it even more insufferable, Apatow cast his wife, Leslie Mann, as Laura and their real-life daughters as her two children. He seems to genuinely believe that his family is so lovable that we'll want to spend a full hour locked in the house with them, and trust me, they're not.
Funny People suffers mostly from the same problem that dogs almost all films about people working in the film industry -- they don't understand why we might not have sympathy for a world-famous man roaming around his $300 million home, bemoaning how lonely he is. Boo hoo.