A worry for us that want Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” dramedy to contain as much drama as it does comedy.
Let’s back up a sec, when we read “Funny People,” a few months back, it definitely felt like his most mature work to date, but we felt he sort of hedged his bets his bets a little bit and definitely could have pushed it a bit. We compared notes with other friends of ours read it at the same time and they found it melancholy and pushing tough emotions in some places, but we found the climax a little too unnecessarily comical and thought they could have pushed it a tad further (it felt like a slightly darker “Knocked Up”)
Either way, we all thought it was one of the best and most enjoyable things Apatow had written. However, a little concern over here having read this quote by Seth Rogen in the most recent EW which suggests they shied away from some of the more dramatic and painful parts in the original screenplay.
“I think Judd may have intended it to be much more of a downer that it ultimately is. In the end, we’re all chicken. We just want to get laughs,” Rogen laughed.
In “Funny People,” a love triangle emerges between Adam Sandler’s dying comedian, his ex-girlfriend/ the one that got away ,Leslie Mann and her husband Eric Bana. What transpires if funny, sad, and complicatedly bittersweet… or at least on paper it is.
So did they back off the the semi-wistful ending all together or possibly even change it? See, our problem is these guys can get laughs any day of the week, wouldn’t you want to see them push it into some bittersweet moments of heartbreak ala Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall”? We sure would. Let’s hope they didn’t chicken out too much, laughs come easy for this troupe, but it’s the poignant moments that make them potentially endure as comedy classics.