****YOU'VE BEEN WARNED - THERE WILL BE HUGE SPOILERS HERE*****
You know the new Adam Sandler flick, Funny People? - Not so funny.
The premise is great, I love Judd Apatow movies, and I like almost all of the main actors. However, it ended up kind of sucking. Ira (Seth Rogan) is a deli-market worker in L.A. who's trying to break into comedy by doing stand-up. By a happy coincidence, famous comedian George Simmons (Adam Sandler) sees him perform, and they later meet. George has just found out that he has a rare form of leukemia and that experimental medicine will give him an 8% chance of surviving. Not feeling very funny, he hires Ira to write some jokes for him. They spend time together, George lets Ira in on the I'm-dying-but-don't-want-to-tell-anyone secret, and they kind of bond.
George looks back on his life and realizes he never should have cheated on his ex-girlfriend (Leslie Mann). She's "the one that got away", and she's married with kids now. But he reconnects, and they sleep together. And, *shocking*, George doesn't die.
The ONLY person in this movie that maintains some dignity is Ira. George is a past-cheater, and is now seducing a married woman. The woman is disgusting because she KNOWS she's married to someone not that great and uses that as an excuse to cheat. Even Ira's roommates are skanky and sleeping with people they should not. Clark, the husband, has been adulterous too. It's disgusting.
However, Ira is the only person who grows as a person, gets better at his desired profession, and doesn't go sleeping around. George Simmons, the one who has a brush with death and the main character the movie is based on - no growth, no real change.
If you enjoy hilarious, vulgar humor like Apatow's other flicks, you might enjoy this. The stand-up scenes really are hysterical. But the "real" storyline sucks. I hate characters that cheat, and it makes me not care about them anymore. I'm really disappointed - this was Apatow's first real venture into something serious (as well as Seth Rogan and numerous other actors in the film) and it failed miserably. I read some article a while back that said based on his movies, Apatow must have a very low opinion of his fellow males and females. I thought they were stretching things a bit (after all, his movies were comedies), but now I think that reporter may be on to something.
1 out of 5 stars. Ouch.