The SmarK DVD Rant - Dangerous Comedy!
"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."
- The Joker
I think that one of the reasons that safe and predictable pop culture junk like the Night At The Museum movies or the (Noun) Movie series keep getting made is that truly cutting-edge comedy isn't always funny. Yes, Monty Python was routinely brilliant, but for every Dead Parrot Sketch there are a million misses within the same show. I personally find it easier to deal with a swing for the fences that misses rather than a tepid ground out to first, because at least there was the potential for gold in one of them. Sandra Bullock mugging for the camera makes $100 million because you know exactly what you're getting and it doesn't scare people off. The Hangover made nearly $300 million domestically because it was an easy-to-understand concept pulled off spectacularly well.
And then there's Bruno and Funny People, released around the same time earlier this year…
Bruno
I was a big fan of Borat until it became a kind of ubiquitous Austin Powers-like source of annoying quotes for hipster douchebags everywhere. Repeated viewings haven't held up as well as I'd hoped, mainly because the shocking stuff pulled off by Sacha Baron Cohen isn't particularly shocking any longer. However, at heart it's still a movie with something to say about stereotyping different cultures and making assumptions about foreigners, even if the message sometimes gets lost in the child pornography and poop jokes.
Bruno, however, was a different animal entirely. Whereas I got Borat and kind of understood the message being imparted, Bruno just left me feeling confused about what I was supposed to be getting out of it. The setups are mostly the same, as Cohen has perfected "ambush comedy" by trapping people in a room with him and then forcing them to react to whatever antics he comes up with. The best examples come when he simply provides the straight role (pardon the irony) and lets the stupidity of his targets act as the punchline. In Bruno, Cohen's eponymous fashion reporter loses his job and decides to travel to LA to become "uber-famous", giving him an excuse to run into a variety of celebrities along the way. His "interview" with Harrison Ford is classic, for instance. Others felt more like comedic entrapment than legitimate criticism, however. Interviewing politician Ron Paul and then setting up a situation where Bruno comes onto him to provoke a "homophobic" reaction is more unsettling than hilarious, as there's no "right" answer for what behavior would have been acceptable. Paul is presumably not gay, so he had every right to storm out of the room when a gay man was making unwanted sexual advances towards him. It's basic human rights! Ditto for the hunting scene, where Cohen is so desperate to provoke a reaction from a group of redneck hunters that he strips naked and throws himself at one of the group at 4 AM. Was the guy SUPPOSED to let this weirdo into his tent?
I think that's the nature of being on the edge like Cohen is, however. Sometimes the reason for your actions isn't entirely apparent, and there's going to be some bits that offend people. That relative minor criticism is balanced out, I think, by how fucking hilarious the rest of the movie is. Yeah, there's more misses than Borat featured, but the sheer brilliance of his TMZ-style celebrity show pilot justifies its own existence without any problem. Similarly, the series of interviews with parents desperate to make their babies into celebrities, while only having a slight connection to the rest of the movie, is jaw-droppingly great and provides some of the movie's best lines. Really, the biggest problem I had with the movie is that it's more like 20 little awesomely funny character skits attached together with a rivet gun and kinda-sorta formed into a cohesive movie. There's really no other way to move between ideas like Bruno interviewing a terrorist (and barely making it out alive) and Bruno terrorizing a black talk show audience. It's blunt force comedy at its best, and when it works it really works. When it doesn't (like the surprisingly misfiring adventure with the military), at least it's never boring. I don't think Bruno will have the cultural impact that Borat did, but it was a worthwhile attempt, even if I have to wonder how long he can fool people until everyone knows who he is.
Funny People
From the hilarious cutting-edge we go to…Adam Sandler. But at least this movie is self-aware enough to know that Sandler is the kind of guy whose career has descended into making easily-digested box office garbage like "Merman" or "Redo". Sandler's melancholy portrayal of a formerly-edgy comedian who now lives alone in his giant mansion longing for human companionship might be a bit too close to home for some Hollywood bigshots. In fact the movie was apparently inspired by a meeting that director Judd Apatow had with Steve Martin, so take what you will from that.
This of course is a much different movie than Apatow's two previous directorial efforts (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), veering more into the Punch Drunk Love side of Sandler's acting experiences than the hacky comedies parodied within the movie. And I guess that's immediately part of the problem, because you see Apatow and Sandler together and you're thinking "wacky bromantic comedy" and that's not what you're getting at all. Seth Rogen is Ira Wright, a struggling comedian who makes jokes at the expense of George Simmons (Sandler) one night at a comedy club and finds himself bonding with the millionaire comedian as a result. From working as his assistant, Ira finds himself working up the ladder of comedy, opening for Simmons on tour and writing jokes for him, but sometimes getting too close of a look at the darker side of Simmons' life. There's actually a ton of different subplots running at once here, from Simmons' apparently fatal disease to Ira's roommates (Jonah Hill as another struggling writer and Jason Schwartzman as the star of an NBC-style sitcom called "Yo, Teach!") to the girl down the hall who Ira has a crush on but is unable to ask out. There's a lot of funny stuff going on, but this is definitely a movie that could have used some editing down. Most notably, the second half of the lengthy movie screeches to an unfunny halt when George decides to reconnect with his lost love, putting the characters (and us) in an awkward stretch of more than a hour where they're all cooped up in the house together as George tries to live a life of domestic bliss that he could never have before. It's a weird choice and seems like it belongs in a different movie.
However, while it's not the comedy that it was made out to be by the trailers, it's still a very good movie. Dramatic Sandler can be very effective, and the love story with Leslie Mann is very well acted by everyone involved, including the underrated Eric Bana as the jerkass Australian husband who turns out to be a really decent guy. I just wish that they would have cut out a bunch of the extra stuff and just focused on ”The Wrestler for Comedians" aspect of the story. But hey, sometimes you take chances and they don't work. It happens. Hopefully Judd will go back to the wacky comedies next time out, at least.
Recommendations: Probably rent both of them before buying. Both are very worthwhile for different reasons, though.
I really enjoyed Funny People, especially for the stand up bits scattered throughout the movie. But my personal favorite was how they parodied Sandler’s career with all the cheesy posters scattered throughout as easter eggs.
And for the wrestling fan in all of us, during the scene where they’re cleaning out the garage, there’s a poster of a Sandler/The Rock action comedy on the wall to the right. I was able to see it better in the theater, but on Widescreen DVD, they cut it off slightly.
Still though, those posters were hilarious, and wish they sold those in stores, they would have made a killing.
Did you listen to the commentary on the Bruno DVD, Scott? It’s informative and entertaining and very funny–it lets you know who was in on what and where Cohen and the director Larry Charles were coming from in various scenes. As for “how long he can fool people until everyone knows who he is”, that won’t be a problem: Cohen’s announced that Bruno/Borat/Ali G are all retired characters now. His next project is either a Sherlock Holmes comedy co-starring Will Ferrell or a movie in which Cohen plays a European singer who attempts to win the Eurovision song contest.
Note to Scott: Night at the Museum DOES have “smart comedy” street cred, as both Museum films were written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, of “The State” and “Reno 911″ fame.
And speaking of Seth Rogen, I recently found some old tapes of mine on which I had recorded a couple of episodes of “Undeclared” and found it very funny how Rogen was arguably the fourth bannana of the show and yet went on to become a huge fucking star (granted after several years in the wilderness between the show going off the air and his big movie break). Makes you wonder, in retrospect, if Apatow wishes he could have cast Rogen as the main character on Undeclared as far as the show lasting more than a single season.
I have never understood the love that Sasha Cohen gets from intellectual people. He’s basically a one-trick pony—create an outrageous character and corner people into a reaction. He’s a frat guy in costume.
What is more, his characters aren’t original. Borat is basically a dirty Yakov Smirnoff with an obsession with anti-semitism—Cohen is obsessed with the idea that people hate Jews. Ali G is a whigger. And Bruno is a severe gay stereotype.
What is more, of all 3, only Ali G is relevant today. Borat, as I implied, is a cold war joke, not a post sept-11 joke. Bruno might have been hilarious in the 70s or 80s with emerging gay culture (complete with AIDS making it relevant) clashing with the social conservatives of the Reagan years. But nowadays—in a world that’s had Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Brokeback Mountain, gay marriage debates, and major and minor gay characters in every fictional TV and movie practically—Bruno comes off as poorly as a Stepin Fetchit characterization of blacks from the 1940s.
Quite frankly, Bruno was a bad, unfunny movie that tries to substitute shock for comedy—which also, looking back, characterizes both Borat and Da Ali G Show. Being outrageous and continuing to up the ante is what a hacky stand up comedian does when he doesn’t have the jokes or delivery. Its not surprising Borat and Bruno are beloved by teenagers and young adults, because, to a teenager or hipster, saying “f***” or wearing a nun’s outfit to a Halloween party is the height of humor —mainly because they aren’t able to put together a decent joke.
And the people in Bruno, as in Borat, come off much better than Cohen. Most of them refuse to take his bait, and are polite to his character in the face of outrageous activity.
As for “Funny People,” again, I don’t get this massive love for Judd Apatow. His movies aren’t original, nor is the potty mouthed humor. I suppose he just came along at the right time to hit up a certain market, but his movies are no better written than Porky’s or a lame National Lampoon. And shitty acting? You betcha!
And why the hate on Sandler? Here’s a guy who’s been the most reliable comedy hitmaker in Hollywood for years. His movies are consistent and well done—go back to Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy, etc. He was never edgy, but he was never meant to be—Sandler longed for his movies to be both sweet and semi-raunchy and appeal to everyone. Yes, he does the hacky crap, but Zohan was perfectly in the spirit of his old movies. I think he’ll get a good retrospective once he’s gone—his comedy holds up well, while Ferrell and Apatow and Cohen have plummetted with each new film they make.
Have you heard the Sandler comedy albums? Listen to them and tell me he doesn’t try to be edgy and raunchy.
I agree the albums were for the teen market, but he was just starting to gain ground during his early SNL days. And they weren’t that raunchy—lots of violence, but the situations were tame.
But his movies were designed for broad appeal. When he went to the silver screen, it was all about the masses.
Sandler’s albums weren’t that raunchy?
The lyrics to “At A Medium Pace” from his first album:
Put your arms around me baby
Can’t you see I need you so
Hold me close against your skin
I’m about to begin
Lovin’ you
Spit on your hand and stroke my cock
At a medium pace
Play with my balls and tell me
How big they are
Honey, rub your beaver
Up and down my face
Sit on the corner of the bed
And watch me whack off
You see that shampoo bottle
Now stick it up my ass
Push it in and out
At a medium pace
Talk about your old boyfriend’s dick
And how big it was
Now shave off my pubes
And punch me in the face
Whoa darlin’
Make me push my dick and balls
Back between my legs
Call me an ugly woman
And take my picture to show
All the people you work with
Now pull up my scrotum
And take the shampoo bottle
Out of my ass
Pretend I’m the pizza delivery guy
And watch me whack off
Strap on a dildo
And make me give you head
Tell me to slow down
And do it at a medium pace
I feel so humiliated
I’m about to blow my load
You tell me it’s time to make love
But now I can’t
‘Cause I spewed all over myself
Then you look into my eyes
And you realize
How much I enjoy lovin’ you
I’m so sorry I spunked on my stomach
Maybe next time I’ll be better at lovin’ you
And we’re talking about his movies, not the album. The album was for teens, not mass appeal.
You castigate both Cohen and Apatow for “potty-mouthed humor” then talk up Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore? Wow, those are some rose-colored glasses you’re wearing there.
Happy and Billy had their dirty moments, but Cohen/Apatow make all their money being filthy. Comparing Sandler’s moments of dirt to COhen/Apatow is like comparing a kid stepping in dog poo to a pig rolling in s***.
and please note I did call Sandler’s movies semi-raunchy, and I only complained that apatow/Cohen’s potty mouthed humor are unoriginal. It’s not rose colored to see the truth.
I agree with everything you’ve said.
Apatow is an overgrown 13-year-old who finds words like “fuck” and “pussy” to be inherently funny.
There are no real jokes.