There's a cinematic rule of thumb that comedies don't tend to run over 2 hours in length, yet in the case of the 146 minutes Funny People, a) Judd Apatow loves to break this rule and b) despite starring Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler, Funny People is not a comedy. The film is instead a surprisingly nuanced drama about a man struggling to cope with his own mortality, laced with some darkly comic undertones, but the problem is that it just drags on and on and on, labouring its point about appreciating life when a respectable 90-100 minutes would have been plenty of time to make the same point. The banter between Sandler and Rogen is never too tiresome, but I remember leaving the cinema thoroughly exhausted at the fact that Apatow had slow-bled this relatively simple story over such a beefy runtime. The fact that his latest film, This Is 40, runs in at 134 minutes, suggests to me that Apatow needs to hire a more judicious editor.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
