FROM MTV.COM: George Simmons is a dying comic. Not just dying onstage — he's really dying, of leukemia. In Judd Apatow's "Funny People," Adam Sandler, in a strong and resolutely unsentimental performance, plays this character as a guy who's worked his way to the top of his trade — from bottom-rung standup gigs to blockbuster movies — and now, at 40, doesn't know what to do with the news that his time is up. What's it all been for? He recently moved into a huge Malibu mansion, through which he wanders like Charles Foster Kane adrift in the empty splendor of Xanadu. Which is to say, alone. "I don't have any friends," he tells Ira Wright, the guy he's hired to impersonate one. "I have showbiz friends."
Ira (Seth Rogen at his most winning) is just starting out in the comedy business. George caught his act at an L.A. club — one of the places where George himself started out — and while he didn't much care for the muddled performance, he liked the material Ira had written. So he's hired the younger man to write some similarly funny stuff for him — and, in addition, to share beers, shoot the breeze, tuck him in at night and help him sort through all the memorabilia and expensive cars he's accumulated over the course of his now suddenly abbreviated career, and start getting rid of it. Ira is star-struck and delighted: Finally he can start spending a lot less time with his roommates — Mark (Jason Schwartzman), a comic who's hit it big in a witless TV sitcom (and annoyingly leaves his hefty paychecks lying around the apartment), and Leo (Jonah Hill), a bristly and talented fellow writer who's also trying to make it in standup.
Continue reading 'Funny People': Near Dark, By Kurt Loder
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