A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

STILL BETTER THAN LITTLE NICKY: Even after spending the trip home thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure what to say about Funny People, particularly not without getting into spoiler territory. Yes, it's pretty ridiculously self-indulgent (not Lady In The Water self-indulgent, but having your child singing being an emotional key point in the film is pretty damn self-indulgent), and, yes, it's not the laugh riot that Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin were. The biggest thing that strikes me is that there are probably two good 90-minute movies here--one centered on the relationship between Sandler and Rogen's characters, and the other centered on the relationship between Sandler and Mann's characters. Instead, we get a 150-minute movie that tries to serve both masters but winds up satisfying neither. I'll be very interested to see deleted scenes and the like, and wonder if there might be either a shorter or a longer movie in there that's better. However, a recurrent joke about Rogen's character's real name will make at least several of our readers laugh particularly hard, and a lot of the stand-up segments sprinkled throughout the film (allegedly partially written by the performers themselves) are quite funny, as are some of the cameos (James Taylor may actually get the biggest laugh in the film). A failure, perhaps, but assuredly an interesting one.