Weekly Comedy: A Few Days Early

So last week there was no Weekly Comedy article, and it also happened to be one of the biggest release weeks in a long while (if you’re in to network sitcoms), and so to compensate, here’s Weekly Comedy a few days early. Happy now?

DVD

Observe and Report – This pitch-black and occasionally shocking comedy from Seth Rogen came out basically at the wrong time – only a few months after Midwesterners had decided thatPaul Blart: Mall Cop would be the only mall cop-themed comedy they’d be interested in seeing this year. Observe and Report is a really solid, really daring film that pushes black comedy to strange, disturbing new places. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you’re the sort of person who can laugh at a situation no matter how utterly fucked up and broken it gets, you really shouldn’t miss this one.

30 Rock: Season Three – The third season of 30 Rock was really great and it’s out on DVD this week. This season featured Jack’s romance with Salma Hayek and the episode where Kenneth sees the world as populated by Muppets. You have no excuse to not buy this.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto – Based on the comic book by Rob Zombie, this animated tale of a superhero luchadore who fights Nazis and shit seems like it’s tailor made for the comic book store clerk who’s also really into heavy metal. Featuring original songs by Hard ‘n Phirm and the voices of Brian Posehn and Paul Giamatti. I watched the clips on Amazon and it honestly didn’t look particularly funny; fans of Jon Krickfalusi might dig it, though. They’re definitely biting his style.

Hot Fuzz & Shaun of the Dead (Bluray) – These were available on HD-DVD before, and are now out on Bluray. Both are excellent films (although perhaps over-quoted and over-referenced by the malignant geeks who do that sort of thing). If you’ve never seen these before, then feel the proper amount of shame.

TV

Bored to Death – Debuting tonight on HBO, Bored to Death stars Jason Schwartzman as a struggling writer who decides to moonlight as a Private Dick. Also starring Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson; it looks particularly low-key and mannered, and might be pretty damn good. Incidentally you can watch the entire pilot right now, right here.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7 – The seventh season of Larry David’s misanthrope-athon begins tonight, and promises a Seinfeld “non-reunion”, which is pretty great, but that doesn’t happen until a couple episodes in. Frankly, the last few seasons of this show have been a little weak; especially season 5, although the end of Season 6 was really great. Here’s hoping they’re going to maintain that level of quality.

COMEDY SKIPPABLES THIS WEEK

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – Matthew McConaughey sure does bang a lot of chicks, and in this movie, it’s their turn for revenge! Shirts will be removed, wedding cakes destroyed, perhaps a dog will have a reaction shot, and in the end, McConaughey will turn out to be not as douchey as everyone thought. Until he resets his persona for the next movie where he’s a douchey ladies man who gets his comeuppance.

Comedy Is Dead Review: Funny People

Funny People is, above all things, a movie for comedians and the comedy nerds who love them and are fascinated by them. If you are either of those things, even the film’s 2.5 hour runtime will not phase you. In fact, it might not even feel like enough.

At its core, this film is a deeply personal exploration of the people and personalities that gravitate toward comedy as a career, with Adam Sandler’s character George Simmons (who is clearly designed to be a rough analogue for Sandler himself) as the almost numbingly selfish, self-hating, isolated epicenter of it all. It is often blisteringly hilarious, sometimes very touching, but mostly it’s just real and human and honest.

This film is a “comedy” only in the sense that it is about comedians and comic actors, who are all very funny in their day to day lives (some, naturally, more than others, which the film takes special care to point out), but overwhelmingly this is a very emotional film about a group of people who are, fundamentally, pretty fucked up emotionally, and that’s what drives them to do the very thing they live for. At times it feels like Judd Apatow has ripped his heart out and smeared it all over the screen; there’s that much emotional honesty in this thing.

The performances are all completely fantastic. It’s been mentioned dozens of times before, but this is the Adam Sandler of Punch Drunk Love rather than The Waterboy. He's playing “George Simmons”, the embittered, fabulously wealthy and utterly alone guy who stars in garbage exactly like The Waterboy (encapsulated here by a string of high-grossing, big-budget, totally shitty fake comedies like “Mer-Man” and “Re-Do”, films that do not represent who Simmons really is). Simmons finds out he’s terminally ill and decides to go back to standup comedy, and one night, after bombing horribly with a depressing set fueled by his sudden mortality, he hires Ira (played in three dimensions by a ratcheted-down Seth Rogen), a struggling standup comedian, to help him write material for the stage and be his personal assistant. The journey that follows – both physically and emotionally – is suitably described as “epic”, and not in the annoying internet sense of the word, but in the Laurence of Arabia sense.

All in all, it’s hard to describe Funny People as a ‘comedy’. It is, rather, a very funny drama about comedians. It’s also one of the most incredibly personal and utterly fascinating movies I’ve seen in a long time. For god’s sake, go see it.

Oh, and Maria Bamford and Brian Posehn are listed in the IMDB credits for this film but apparently didn't make the final cut. We hereby demand that Bamford and Posehn's scenes are included on the DVD, no matter how minor.