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Apatow stretches with flawed but funny "People"

Author: Kirk Honeycutt |

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The prerelease narrative behind "Funny People" is that funnyman Judd Apatow has gone serious in his third outing as a writer-director and made a drama, albeit one set in the world of stand-up comics.

Well, yes and no.

It's hard to consider "Funny People" as anything other than a comedy even if it does deal with a comic (Adam Sandler) who has a deadly disease. Indeed, a medical checkup only presents an opportunity for Sandler and his assistant (Seth Rogen) to mock a tall Swedish doctor. But there is a serious side to this film that makes the second half go awry.

Apatow as a writer, producer and director has created so many movies whose grosses reach the nine-figure stratosphere that no one should bet against "Funny People" doing likewise after Universal releases it Friday (July 31). If anything, admirers should be intrigued by a "serious" Apatow and accept a flawed comedy from today's master of laughs as a well-earned stretch. So box office might be slightly off from his greatest highs, but only slightly.

What is intriguing about "Funny People" is how well it plays for half of its 146-minute running time. A seemingly fatal disease that fells one of Hollywood's top comics, George Simmons (Sandler), causes him to reflect not only upon the emptiness of much of his life but also on the nature of humor. The characters, down to the smaller roles, are better realized and more lifelike than in any previous Apatow film, and he hits all the right notes in the film's pacing, laughs and emotions.

Then George Simmons has the temerity to get better.

While he is dying, George feels a need for a buddy. Because no one in his life fits that description, he hires struggling comic Ira Wright (Rogen) as an assistant to do everything from writing gags to talking him to sleep at night.

NY museum exhibit to show unseen Tim Burton works

Author: Christine Kearney |

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Films, paintings and drawings by film director and artist Tim Burton, which have never been seen before by the public, will be shown in a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.

The retrospective, which will run from November to April, will feature more than 700 works spanning his 27-year film career, including some that were made before he directed such movies as "Batman," "Edwards Scissorhands," and "Sweeney Todd."

The 50-year-old director described being the subject of a major museum exhibition as an "out-of-body" experience.

"It is very surreal, very surprising," Burton told a news conference at the museum on Wednesday. "This is a real re-energizing thing for me."

The exhibit, called "Tim Burton," will screen all of Burton's 14 feature films, as well as student and short films, cartoons, childhood drawings, puppets, costumes and sculptures that Burton drew from pop surrealism, organizers said.

Excerpts from Burton's 1996 film "Mars Attacks!" and an amateur black and white film called "Dr. of Doom," and a long unseen television adaptation of "Hansel and Gretel" that briefly aired in 1983 were shown at the preview.

Burton said growing up in suburban Burbank, California forced him to tap into his artistic side and escape through his imagination.

"There wasn't a real kind of artistic culture," said Burton, who now lives in London. "Where I got anything, it was from TV or movies."

The exhibit is the first retrospective by a major museum to show Burton's works including those "virtually unknown", said Museum of Modern Art Director Glenn Lowry.

Apatow stretches with flawed but funny "People"

NY museum exhibit to show unseen Tim Burton works

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