Drawn and quartered: Sandler bares his soul

Funny People has confirmed something that I’ve known for a very long time: Adam Sandler is marginally proud of his bird-brained, baby-voiced comedies like Billy Madison, but please don’t carve their titles onto his headstone when he dies.

Life needs more substance, he comes to learn, and substance can’t be found in silly voices and situational comedies where he adopts a kid to make picking up women easier (Big Daddy) or that one with a magic remote control that could mute out his nagging wife (Click). And, apparently, beating people senseless was counterproductive on some sort of metaphysical level.

Say what you will about Adam Sandler — and I’ve said a lot of mean, hateful things (all justified) in reviews over the years — but he bares his soul in Funny People, a movie that could easily be his life story, or swan song. In fact, the film opens with real home videos of a teenage Adam Sandler prank calling restaurants and wandering around New York City. This is pre-SNL Sandler, and he has this sparkle in his eye as he tells a restaurant manager in an elderly woman's voice that "the roast beef is really good, but it makes me go to the bathroom every time." Of course, Sandler grows up to become a megastar, which is basically the route Funny People follows. Where Sandler ends and George Simmons, the character he plays, begins is a seamless, fluid transition that is almost imperceptible. It’s a testament to Sandler’s abilities, of which he has many (Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me) when he’s not chasing invisible penguins or, and I quote, “shlibby-dibby-doo gally-hoo-hoo.”

Simmons is a Hollywood comedy star whose films could easily be real Sandler vehicles, including one where he plays a man transformed into a baby with a giant adult head, and another where he plays the bumbling oceanic superhero Merman. These blockbuster films have alienated him from real comedy, especially from his roots, stand-up, where people much funnier and much more talented than him stare up at his mega-grossing comedy with bitterness and resentment — call it the Dane Cook Syndrome. Or maybe the model was really Eddie Murphy, who started raw and ended up doing kiddie comedies with talking animals and day care children.

Anyway, a funny thing happens: George gets an incurable form of blood disease. Suddenly his reign on top — alone with no wife, no children and no real happiness — doesn’t feel so glorious. In a bid to recommit himself to life, what little of it he has left, he hits the comedy circuit, calls his ex-girlfriend to apologize and begins eBaying all his unopened Hollywood freebies. Helping him through all this is Ira (Seth Rogen), an amateur comic George meets at a Los Angeles comedy club. Ira, seeing an opportunity to write for a legitimate star, jumps aboard not realizing the implications caused by George's celebrity personality.

The film’s highest priority is the salvation of George’s broken and barren soul, but the buddy-buddy relationship between Ira and George comes in a close second. They’re both commiserating Jewish comics, both playful wordsmiths and both are hopeless when it comes to women, although George is fairly good with the one-night-stands, including one who asks for the Merman call during the big show. The two comics share one key difference, though: Ira’s comedy is organically funny and George's is forced and synthetic coming from a man who no longer experiences life from the perspective of a normal person. It goes back to an old saying: Never trust a comic who arrives to the show in a limousine.

In these types of films — call them Illness Movies — it’s typical to see the dying person change for the better. Funny People abandons many of the clichés, including that one: George is still a self-centered jerk, still a pompous windbag, still a hack comedian with a bad catalog of pictures. He barks at Ira, orders him to fetch Diet Cokes, steals his potential sleeping partners and he pulls the celebrity card too frequently. But the film doesn’t apologize for his behavior. It simply exhibits it as a form of character study: Here's a man who's laughing on the outside and crying on the inside. And even that dynamic fails him in the end.

Funny People is largely about George and Ira (sadly, no Gershwin turns up), even though the rest of the cast could fill up three other comedy movies. Jonah Hill (Superbad) plays Ira’s tightly wound roommate, as does Jason Schwartzman, whose character is on one of those laugh-tracky high school sitcoms that real comedians groan at. The always-terrific Leslie Mann (Knocked Up and the director's wife) plays an ex-girlfriend who wants George back after discovering her husband (Eric Bana) is cheating on her in China, with massage therapists no less. Refreshing newcomer Aubrey Plaza plays Ira’s crush, an emotionless comedienne with a 10-day window. Oh, and the cameos, there’s plenty: Paul Reiser, Andy Dick, Norm McDonald, Eminem, Ray Romano, Sarah Silverman and Wu-Tang founder the RZA manning a deli counter.

As many people as there are, though, George is never outplayed or overwhelmed. He and Sandler are the stars, and the famous director, comedy juggernaut Judd Apatow, knows this and gives them ample time to share their stories. And as funny as it is, it’s also very mature and focused, even if there are more wiener jokes than at an Oscar Meyer stockholder’s meeting. In one scene Ira turns to James Taylor to ask if he ever gets tired of playing "Fire & Rain," to which Taylor responds to the comedian, "Well, do you ever get tired of talking about your dick?" Touche, Mr. Taylor, touche. The film is a little long at 150 minutes, but I liked that Apatow allowed his characters time to grow, or maybe just shrivel in George's case.

Funny People is a lonely, unapologetic look into a man’s deepest fears — being forgotten. Watching it you can see why funny people like Chris Farley, John Candy and John Belushi went through bouts of depression before self-medicating the solitude away. Sandler, it seems, has beaten that trend and Funny People is the proof.