Opening this weekend
Funny People
No, it’s not as funny as Knocked Up, it’s 20 minutes too long, and I realize you probably won’t like it as much as I did. Nonetheless, it’s a real movie, which is rare, and it’s the best thing Adam Sandler’s done in ten years. And on the other hand, so’s your face.
The Collector
I can’t believe someone had the balls to put “From the writers of Saw IV, V, and VI” in the trailer. Gee, guys, that’s quite the plug. This summer… from the makers of speed bumps, techno, and stubbing your toe on the f*cking coffee table… The only way the bad guy could have a more stupid looking mask is if he made it out of Colin Hanks’ face.
Not Quite Hollywood
This documentary about the obscure-yet-awesome genre of Ozploitation films only opens in New York and LA, but the filmmakers sent me a cool playlist of Ozploitation flicks to attach after the jump. They did my work for me. And I like that.
Christ, I should be working at the Enquirer with these headlines. Anyway, we all remember when Katherine Heigl whined because Knocked Up was sexist, right? Good. Well Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow recently went on Howard Stern, who naturally asked them about her. They responded by saying the obvious things, but it was still cool because Katherine Heigl is a bitch.
Rogen says he doesn’t see how Heigl’s new comedy, The Ugly Truth, makes women look even better. “That [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way,” he quipped.
Added Apatow, “I hear there’s a scene where she’s wearing … Underwear …with a vibrator in it, so I’d have to see if that was uplifting for women.”
Even more baffling, said Apatow, “We never had a ‘fight’” with Heigl while filming. “Seth always says, it doesn’t make any sense - she improvised half her s***,” Apatow said. [USWeekly]
And then Rogen was all, “Yeah dude, it’s like she doesn’t even have a BRAIN!” and I looked over and he was totally holding his nuts so it looked like a brain. So hilarious, bro, you should’ve been there.
I hate that Funny People is 25 minutes too long, because it does a couple of amazing things. From his album They’re All Gonna Laugh at You through a few years after Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler was a comedy God. I laughed so hard the first time I heard “The Buffoon and the Dean of Admissions” that I farted placenta. But at some point around ‘97, he seems to have decided he didn’t give a sh*t anymore and started doing a string of increasingly sappy, unfunny paycheck abortions like Click and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The only glimmers of talent came in dramatic roles like Spanglish and Punch Drunk Love, in which he proved he could act, but didn’t really seem like himself, like he was just trying to prove a point.
Funny People not only reminds us what Sandler looks like when he’s doing honest comedy — and by that I mean comedy that he himself finds funny rather than “You want me to do a silly voice again? Fine, I’ll do the a voice again. Lap it up, you pigs.” — but combines it with the Sandler who can act. Not only that, the story is the kind of pointed, meta-fictional take on his life that JCVD could’ve been for Van Damme if it hadn’t devolved into such a pretentious euro wankfest. I hate to be a reactionary, but while I was writing this I noticed other people calling Funny People Entourage with Cancer, and I felt compelled to point out all the differences between this and Entourage.
1. Decent writing
2. Decent acting
3. Conflict
4. Likable characters
5. The celebrity character in Funny People is famous for having an actual skill
6. The minor characters are trying perfect an actual skill, and aren’t driven by the sole desire to be famous, or to hang out with famous people, or to help the main character get more famous
7. No one talks about shoes or cars, not even once
I’ve only just starting warming up to Raaaaaaandy, Aziz Ansari’s ‘bad comedian’ character, but if you believe Judd Apatow, they’re already talking giving Raaaaaaandy his own movie. And if anyone has the clout to actually make that happen, it’s Judd Apatow. Said the man in an interview with JoBlo:
“Randy isn’t in [Funny People] anywhere near as much we wish he was. Something hilariously magical happened when Aziz showed up. So we all said, ‘What else can we do?’ Let’s just make a documentary! We just couldn’t stop writing for him. And now we’re talking about making the RANDY movie. We can’t get enough of Randy…”
Though he was laughing, he definitely wasn’t joking about a RANDY movie later adding, “we’re outlining it right now.”
I didn’t like this character at all at first but he’s grown on me a lot since then, so maybe by the time this comes out it’ll actually sound like a good idea (it already sounds better than MacGruber). But if it’s “hilariously magical” you’re after, you should’ve seen time my friend pantsed Criss Angel and then I socked him in the belly. Tada! His mascara runs when he cries.
Judd Apatow recently filmed an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio that airs tonight, in which he shows up looking all clean cut like a 6th grader on picture day while James Lipton is his usual eccentric, sycophantic self. In this clip, Apatow reveals that the scene in Knocked Up where Katherine Heigl kicks Seth Rogen out of the car on the way to the gynecologist was actually autobiographical.
APATOW: One thing I thought would be fun would be to sort of capture the intensity of some of these moments between couples. And just how heated it gets. I think at the time I was realizing just how frustrating I was to be around.
LESLIE MANN (Apatow’s wife): I did throw him out of the car on the way to the gynecologist.
APATOW: And that is a complicated moment, because I have no money, and I’m five miles from the gynecologist…
MANN: How did you do that?
APATOW: I took a cab.
MANN: How did you pay?
APATOW: I blew the guy.
Apatow and Mann go all Abbot and Costello at the end there, but you can tell they were super pissed at each other at the time. That’s rough. I’ve never had to hitchhike five miles to the gynecologist, but I have been kicked out of the examination room for making foghorn sounds. And impersonating a doctor.
