Movie Double-Shot: Funny People and The Collector

On Friday, I went to see Funny People with Jack and, as per usual with Apatow, I was pleased with the results. Judd Apatow has his name on a ton of movies but this is only the third he has directed (after 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up). If you know those two movies, you know whether or not his comedy is your cup of tea.

The premise is completely given away by the trailers but I will try to not reveal the important things. The movie opens with Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a very famous comedian who has parlayed his success into a mansion, tons of swag and more money than he knows what to do with. He is diagnosed as having a rare form of Leukemia in the first five minutes and he suddenly realizes how empty and meaningless his fortune is without a family or real friends. In the first act he sort of recruits Seth Rogen (an aspiring stand up) as his personal assistant and confides in him that he is dying. A big reveal happens about halfway through and then the last hour or so is dedicated to Sandler trying to win the love of his former fiance (who has been married and reproducing for 12 years with Eric Bana).

The humor is mostly dick and fart jokes but they are hilarious. There are several touching moments but it never got me to the point of real emotional involvement. Seth Rogen continues to be a real superstar of comedy, turning in another superbly funny performance as a habitual nice guy. My favorite joke of the movie is part of Rogen's stand up act that plays up the fact that he becomes friends with girls rather than a romantic interest (you'll know it when you see it). Sandler shows some of those acting chops like in Punch-Drunk Love here and really captures the loneliness of his character while still keeping a defensive screen of sarcasm and wit about him at all times. Leslie Mann gets her best role to date as Sandler's long lost love. She gets to show some really diverse colors as she moves from lovable to crazy to human. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman turn in good supporting roles, showing up long enough to bring some mild conflict and ribald humor. There are a ton of celebrity cameos here and some of them even work (a stand out involves Eminem and Ray Romano).

The only complaint I can see people having is the length. It almost felt like two movies to me (the one before the big reveal and the one after) and there are tons of subplots that run throughout. I liked the size of the meal here but your mileage may vary. Again, not for people squeamish about dirty jokes but overall a winner.

The Collector, on the other hand, I just barely liked. I keep falling for these horror reviews on Ain't It Cool News where everyone over there just loves torture porn. I am not a huge fan. I made my disliking for The Strangers well known last year. Every Saw movie after the first one just got worse and worse. I've never even seen Hostel or Wolf Creek. Even though I knew the writers of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Saw movies wrote this one, I read a review that said this was really compelling and exciting.

The premise is super-cool, a thief must break into the house of a rich family he installed the alarms for by midnight or Bunny Colvin from the Wire is going to do bad things to his wife and daughter (his wife apparently takes money from loan sharks). When he breaks into the house, he finds that a serial killer has taken the family hostage and booby trapped the hell out of the place. This would seem to set up a cool cat and mouse game between the killer and the thief. But is doesn't.

It is hard to tell whether the killer even knows if the thief is in the house for most of the movie. The thief has keep avoiding trapped rooms but he is pretty passive as the killer goes to town on the family and some hapless bystanders. I can't talk too much about why I don't care for this movie without going into the ending but, if you know why I didn't care for the Strangers, I can say that this is pretty much the same complaint (only slightly better than that movie). The other big problem is the MTV editing where two dark figures, dressed in black, tussle in an unlit room. I had no clue what was going on several times or who came from where and how. There are a couple of traps that I have no clue as to how they worked. That is a failure of basic storytelling. There is a good 20 minute run or more where I don't think anyone speaks and that is a bold move. However, when you take away dialogue, you have to be visually compelling and this movie fails in that regard.

This wasn't nearly as clever or as exciting as I was hoping (several gags are straight out of the Saw playbook). It is exhausting and sadistic in many ways. Not an experience I wish to repeat but, if you love the Saw movies, you should probably see this.

Josh