‘Get Him to the Greek’ is Not Even Sarah Marshall Lite September 26, 2010

Oh, the spin-off. A few good movies and a few good TV shows have spawned by spinning off from the original material. But let’s face it: Usually the spin-off sucks. ‘Get Him to the Greek‘ doesn’t suck, but it is nowhere near as fun, fresh, or entertaining as ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall.’ As I often say with spin-offs and sequels, “You would be better off just watching the original again.”

I will admit that Aldous Snow was the funniest character in ‘FSM,’ so naturally a spin-off about him would make sense. Sadly, though, even with the same character, with a new writer the material isn’t a guaranteed success. Nicholas Stoller is close to the source material, having directed ‘FSM,’ but the director is not the writer. Jason Segel wrote the first film and it was a hit. He didn’t write the spin-off and it’s not a hit.

I will also admit that I do not find Jonah Hill funny. Ever. He has the same syndrome as Michael Cera, his co-star in ‘Superbad,’ that he is always playing the same character. It gets tiring, especially here when him and Aldous run the same joke for 109 minutes. Moderaretly related, it saddens me that I share the same birthday as Jonah Hill.

There are a handful of good moments that could optimally have been edited into bonus footage of the original movie. Mainly they include Elisabeth Moss (Peggy from ‘Mad Men’). She is endearing and funny in her stock role, mostly, I think, because viewers will be used to seeing her in the great show ‘Man Men,’ where she is much more conservative.

The only other memorable moment comes when Jonah Hill’s character encounters Tom Felton (Malfoy from ‘Harry Potter’) playing himself in a club. Laughs are had, but let me illustrate a point: I claimed “Jonah Hill’s character” because I cannot even remember his character’s name. That is how unmemorable this whole ordeal is.

So finally I must conclude that if you were looking to kill about 2 hours there are much better ways to do it, but if you absolutely must watch this movie, you will survive. I did. But I cringed at some shameless jokes along the way.

Funny People November 18, 2009

There is a fundamental problem with the new* Judd Apatow movie, ‘Funny People‘: None of the people in the movie are actually funny. They talk about the jokes they are writing and we see the writing process, but all of the jokes told on stage are punctuated with mild laughter, which is all this movie ultimately gets as well.

There is some heart and some humor here, but Apatow has gone for broke and fallen overboard. ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ was a slim 116 minutes, and while ‘Knocked Up’ trickled over two hours, it was bearable. ‘Funny People’ is a 100 minute movie stretched so far that by the end I was just hoping George Simmons would get hit by a freakin’ bus.

The problem here is that the film puts heart over humor, and Apatow and his actors have a lot of trouble pulling it off. ‘Virgin’ and ‘Knocked Up’ were funny and ended up having a heart under the vulgarity. ‘Funny People’ tries to be serious business, with the disease and the old love and the new family, and we don’t really care enough about the characters to think anything they do is funny. The relationship between George and his old lover Laura (Leslie Mann) is forced in an awkward scene where he regrets cheating on her. Maybe this would work if the parallel scene where Ira (Seth Rogen) watches the kids was amusing, but it isn’t. Seth Rogen is usually insufferable, but he did some good work in this movie. Too his source material wasn’t better.

Don’t get me started on Jonah Hill. This kid has no business being in any movie and is pretty easily the worst component of anything he touches. Yet Judd Apatow loves him, so he keeps popping up.

‘Funny People’ is completely underwhelming. I give this advice often about many new movies where the cardinal people have done better work: Don’t waste your time–watch ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ again.

* Since I am currently in South Korea, sometimes it takes me longer than usual to see movies. I try to keep up to date, but there is only so much I can do.