Funny People Tagged Articles at Cinematical

These days it's common practice for filmmakers to document every single aspect of a movie's creation for its eventual home video release – examining previsualization, creature development, fight choreography, set and costume design, effects rendering, and so on. When you're making a comedy, however, there seems to be less of interest in the different aspects of production (not the least of which because many of those above aren't even a factor), leaving only outtakes, gaffes, and alternate line readings to fill out the bonus features for a forthcoming Blu-ray or DVD.

Judd Apatow's Blu-ray for Funny People, however, runs contrary to expectations; indeed, it's by far the most complete and comprehensive portrait of a comedy production ever assembled. Featuring not only the requisite slate of alternate takes, film flubs, and extra scenes, but two different versions of the film, multiple featurettes, archive footage, and a feature-length documentary about the film's origins, development and production, the two-disc set takes the art of being funny very seriously.

So here we have it, the summer movie season finally winding down, and maybe it's just us, but a couple of peculiar trends have cropped up since May that we thought were worth bringing to light. For starters, we've only further elaborated on Eric's early indicator that puking was 'in' this year (seriously, it's gotten to be a pretty considerable theme), and as for the rest, you can check them out after the jump. Some spoilers follow. And if there are any corrections or additions to be made, please pipe up in the comments, and do so gently.

"Decent," at least, is the watchword for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, whose $56 million opening is roughly half of Transformers 2's first weekend gross. I fear that the movie may follow in the footsteps of Watchmen, which opened to $55 million and ended up with not even twice that much when it left domestic theaters. I do think Paramount deserves credit for actually opening a film that the media, for somewhat mysterious reasons, did its best to bury with manufactured bad buzz. It's really not a bad number, and foreign box office should be strong with this one. A year ago I would have expected G.I. Joe to be more of a summer standout.

The $20 million on Julie & Julia seems a little low to me. I expected at least Devil Wears Prada numbers, but I guess this one skewed a little older. Hopefully that will also translate to legs for the well-reviewed film, though Mamma Mia!-style longevity seems unlikely. The clever A Perfect Getaway did mediocre business, as expected, grossing just under $6 million with no real marketing hook. I'll pick this one as my obligatory plug of the week: fans of thoughtful, off-kilter genre films should give it a shot.

Sometimes navel gazing is a good thing, if an artist looks truly and honestly inside him or herself for material. If they're truly gifted, and can tap into something universal or human, the result can be a masterwork. But if the artist finds himself too far removed from everyday life, or if their visions and ideas are too close to home to find a logical shape, the result can be something of a mess. Navel-gazing dramas are a dime a dozen, but it takes a special talent to try it with comedy. Judd Apatow's Funny People was the #1 movie in a very slow week, which shows that audiences were probably about as fond of it as critics were. I would bet the main complaint across the board was the same: it's too long. Either way, there's usually something interesting about these projects.

1. Elizabethtown (2005)
Though Apatow is catching up, Cameron Crowe is the #1 comedy navelgazer in the history of cinema. This rambling, sprawling thing was supposed to be a cute romantic comedy about a depressed schlub whose life is turned around by a cute airline stewardess. Unfortunately, too many useless subplots about funerals and forgotten bands get in the way, in addition to the fact that the male character is overwritten and underplayed by Orlando Bloom, and the female character is underwritten and overplayed by Kirsten Dunst. The whole thing culminates in a weird musical, mix-tape road trip odyssey that must have lit Crowe's fire, but didn't spark for anyone else.

Are you a man or a woman? That may be the essential reason why you either loved or hated Judd Apatow's Funny People, starring Adam Sandler as a comedian facing a mid-life crisis. Marketing research firm CinemaScore says that men graded the movie B+ but women only granted it C+. As reported by Los Angeles Times, that translates into: "men generally liked it ... most women did not."

Which is puzzling to me, because, as I was watching it (alone again, naturally), it didn't strike me as the kind of movie that might polarize the sexes. Now, I can understand the overall audience being smaller than something like the latest Harry Potter. Our own Eugene Novikov surmised as much in his box office summary, pointing out that attempting to market the film "as a typical Adam Sandler comedy was quixotic, and as another laugh riot from the Apatow factory only marginally less so." Yet, I would have anticipated that men and women who had seen Apatow's earlier directorial efforts, The 40-Year Old-Virgin and Knocked Up -- or any of the films of Adam Sandler -- would have a good idea what to expect, as far as the level of raunch and a view of women as generally cranky and more than a little scary. Did Funny People go too far?

Enlighten us, please. Take our poll of the sexes and let us know: Why did you like Funny People? Why didn't you like Funny People? And did you fight about it on the way home? Feel free to elaborate in the comments section.

Attempting to market Funny People as a typical Adam Sandler comedy was quixotic, and as another laugh riot from the Apatow factory only marginally less so. Still, the combination of Sandler and Apatow (and, probably, Rogen) was enough to get the off-kilter, two-and-a-half-hour dramedy off to a $23 million start -- not one for the record books, but hey, not too far off the opening numbers for Apatow's Knocked Up and Sandler's Bedtime Stories. There are shades of M. Night Shyamalan in Judd Apatow, in the way that he appears to be moving from blockbuster crowdpleasers to more personal, slightly odd films that not everyone "gets."

Aliens in the Attic, hidden from critics and not really sold as any sort of event, unsurprisingly ended up with a middling $7.8 million -- a minor opening for a minor flick. The independently-distributed horror film The Collector, from some of the folks behind the Saw franchise, debuted in 11th place and $3.6 million; not great either, but probably above expectations, and perhaps an indication of how many ticket buyers are willing to see a horror movie, any horror movie, on a given weekend. (500) Days of Summer continues to do very well in limited release, with the highest per-screen average in the top 20. Next week, when the film expands to over 1000 screens, will be the real test.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince found its footing a bit in its third weekend after last week's big tumble; it won't wind up atop the franchise, but may make a run for second place. And I was glad to see Orphan hold up at least semi-respectably after a weak start. That's one summer movie that deserves better than it got.

The weekend's top 12 after the jump.

In the new film Funny People, Ira Wright, the character played by Seth Rogen, reveals more or less inadvertently that the reason he became a stand-up comedian was because he was ridiculed by his classmates as a boy. This is probably one of the film's most profound moments, although it hardly treats it as such; but there's a long and illustrious history of comedy serving the purpose of concealing people's feelings, both on and off screen. And filtered through the meta-movie stardom of Adam Sandler's ailing A-lister, Funny People is precisely about the walls people put up in one way or another to protect themselves from emotional harm – which, as the film observes, almost always become a prison for the person who builds them.

Sandler plays George Simmons, a mega-comedian and movie star who decides to "return to his roots" in stand-up after a doctor diagnoses him with a rare and inoperable disease that gives him only a limited time to live. After a disastrous appearance at a local club, George meets Rogen's Ira, an aspiring comedian who mines a few laughs out of his performance, and he hires Ira to write jokes for him, and eventually, to work as his personal assistant. But when George reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann), who is now married to a daffy Australian huckster named Clarke (Eric Bana), he begins to truly reconsider his affluent but empty lifestyle.

The hallowed halls of Hogwarts were stormed this past weekend by a group of heavily armed guinea pigs (metaphorically speaking, but imagine the film THAT would make) as G-Force pushed the latest Harry Potter adventure down to second place. The Ugly Truth took a respectable third place with the creepfest Orphan taking fourth. Here's the top five:

1. G-Force: $31.7 million
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $29.5 million
3. The Ugly Truth: $27.6 million
4. Orphan: $12.9 million
5. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $8.4 million

Three more new ones this week with laughs for younger and older audiences, and one designed to make you rethink your parenting options.

Aliens in the Attic
What's It All About: An adventure comedy about a group of kids fighting off hostile but diminutive aliens while staying at their family's Summer home.
Why It Might Do Well: Doris Roberts in a Matrix style kung fu battle? Does that conjure an image or what?
Why It Might Not Do Well: The trailer makes this seem like an uninspired made-for-Disney-Channel production.
Number of Theaters: 3,100
Prediction: $11 million

Funny People
What's It All About: In this comedy Adam Sandler plays a successful stand-up comic who, when he learns he is dying, tries to forge a friendship with an up and coming comedian played by Seth Rogen.
Why It Might Do Well: This is the latest from Judd Apatow who directed Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin and as of right now it's got an 82% at Rottentomatoes.com.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Sandler has had his share of bad films.
Number of Theaters: 3,000
Prediction: $38 million

In the new film Funny People, comedian Adam Sandler plays an actor remarkably similar to, well, Adam Sandler. His character, George Simmons, is a former stand-up comic who's become obscenely wealthy and famous through a series of patently terrible films with titles like Merman and Dog's Best Friend (Erik Davis wrote about these movies-within-the-movie and shared clips -- check it out here). Now a little older and trying to beat a possibly fatal medical condition, Simmons takes a new look at his life -- including the crappy but wildly popular movies that made him a star.

The fake movies are truly awful. But not any worse than some of abysmal actual movies made by Sandler himself, like Little Nicky, Eight Crazy Nights, Mr. Deeds, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, etc. Since the character is so baldly modeled on Sandler, one can't help but wonder what he thinks about the parodies that he helped to create, to make fun of his own career.

Unfortunately I cannot yet share my opinion on Judd Apatow's new flick Funny People, which I watched recently at an undisclosed location in a city that will not be named. But, I can tell you that within the film there are clips from a bunch of fake films (we've already shared some of them with you), and they were created to decorate the past of George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a big-time actor who's made loads of money off a slew of craptacular comedies. Early on in the film, Simmons finds out he's living with a rare disease that will most likely kill him -- and it's that fact that sets this sort of life-adventure flick in motion.

Apatow has been writing these little blogs for MTV leading up to the release of Funny People on July 31, and the latest one reveals a longer version of the Merman scene that's actually in the film, as well as two fake movie scenes that just couldn't be squeezed in. One is called Sayonara Davey, which Apatow calls their "politically incorrect foreign exchange student movie," and the other is the obligatory dog-cop drama Dog's Best Friend (see the poster to the right). Check out all three clips after the jump, and learn more about Simmons' real-fake career (some of it is actually based on Sandler's early days) over on the fictional character's real website.

Watch the clips after the jump