BEFORE: I've got a bunch more Robin Williams movies to watch, but I'll put them off yet again - I can always do a pick-up week of that later. Instead I'll transition from musicians to comedians.
THE PLOT: When seasoned comedian George Simmons learns of his terminal health condition, his desire to form a genuine friendship causes him to take a younger performer under his wing as his opening act.
AFTER: I don't know if this movie was titled properly, since most of the time the main characters weren't being funny - oh, sure, we see them doing comedy bits on stage, but even some of those bombed or were only marginally amusing. Maybe they should have called the film something like "Stand-Up Guy", since the central character played by Seth Rogen (last seen in "Observe and Report"), keeps trying to do the right thing. And he does stand-up comedy, get it? Double meaning...
Then again, maybe the title DOES have another meaning, since "funny" also means "strange" - so they ARE funny people, just funny in a different way. Certainly there's nothing funny about a terminal illness (or is there?) or coming to terms with death, or having regrets about how one has lived. That's what happens to George, played by Adam Sandler (last seen in "The Waterboy"), and so we get to see how a famous comedian might act when he knows he's going to die.
The terminal illness plot is a Hollywood standby, a convenient shorthand for a character's mortality (and, by extension, our own), and it comes with a built-in conflict and resolution, one way or the other. See, this is why I'm not officially a film reviewer, because I've spent too much time seeing how films get made, so when I'm watching them, it's almost always from the angle of figuring out why the pieces got put together in just this way. You just know someone had to brainstorm this out, thinking about how they would act when confronted with their own death - who would they contact, how would their life change, how would it affect their relationships and friendships?
The sub-plot of a young comedian makes sense in this context too, and not just as a foil character - why is he a struggling comedian? Because struggling means conflict, and you can't pitch a movie idea that goes, "There's this comedian, and he's really funny, and he starts to succeed, and so he continues to succeed, and he becomes famous and successful." That's all you got? So the conflict gets added, between him and his rivals, him and his roommates, him and potential dates. It seems kind of cookie-cutter when you take a step back from it and think about how it was all conceived.
It's not that this film is directionless, quite the opposite - it tries to go in several directions at once, and goes through several situational mutations. And underneath the awkward comedy is an awkward drama, with people acting awkward, and "acting" awkwardly to boot. But maybe that in itself says something about comedians - isn't the stereotype that they're all laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside? And if they can't learn from their own mistakes, maybe they can at least take advice from looking at the mistakes of others.
Who knows, maybe the "sad clown" stereotype is accurate. Andy Kaufman, Phil Hartman, and Chris Farley leap to mind, I'm sure there are many other examples. But do we really want to see behind the curtain and see how dysfunctional comedians are, or do we just want to look at the surface performances and be entertained? When you have to explain a joke, most often you end up killing it, and for me the same often happens with a movie. When I start to think about how it got put together, it spoils the magic.
Also starring Leslie Mann (last seen in "The Cable Guy"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "10 Items or Less"), Eric Bana (last seen in "Black Hawk Down"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Walk Hard"), with cameos from James Taylor, Aziz Ansari, Andy Dick, Charles Fleischer, Paul Reiser, Carol Leifer, Sarah Silverman, Norm MacDonald, Dave Attell, Ray Romano, Eminem, and Justin Long.
RATING: 5 out of 10 popsicles
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