Judd Apatow goes all in with a pair of deuces

"Judd Apatow's hot streak is over."

Maybe. Or maybe he's just voluntarily moving into territory which is more artistically satisfying to him, but is not as rewarding financially.

I admire what we was trying to do with Funny People. It just didn't quite work.

First of all, you may already have heard that it is not a comedy. It is a tragedy about comedians. It's called Funny People, not Funny Movie. Since the lead characters are professional funny people, it includes plenty of funny lines, but it's an old-fashioned "dyin' woman drama" at heart, a Doug Sirk movie, except with a bitter Adam Sandler as the dyin' woman, and spiced up by a whole bunch of random (and mediocre) dick jokes.

For 90 minutes, I felt it was a truly outstanding movie which found a nice handle on how to present humans interacting honestly in a way which was neither sappy nor boring. Unfortunately, the film is two and a half hours long, and the last hour is pointless and rambling and not very funny at all. Not only that, but the script goes all Hollywood and loses its authenticity in a contrived and prolonged twist where the Sandler character re-connects with and then re-loses his true love.

And then the movie never does end. I think Apatow just decided to stop it when he ran out of film.

So it's too long, has no ending, and is an art film, not a comedy. On the other hand, the first 90 minutes, before the fake-ass field trip to Marin County to find true love, come very close to adding up to a great movie. Are you willing to tolerate the bad to experience the good? I was. On balance, it found it worthwhile. I laughed a few times, and found it mostly truthful. At least it was something different and ambitious in a world full of bullshit cookie-cutter film projects.