Judd Apatow’s latest is his lesser effort to date, but is still quite funny at times it just drags on a bit to long and doesn’t hit the emotional highs I think it was going for.
George Simmons is a comedy superstar. He lives the life of celebrity, alone, in a large mansion paid for by the countless blockbuster hits he has starred in. This all seems well and good until one day he finds out that he has a form of leukemia and that it is too late in the game to do anything conventionally associated with cancer treatment. So while George takes his experimental drugs he decides to get back to his roots of stand up and recruits a young and upcoming comedian, Ira, to be his assistant and joke writer as well as being the only person that knows of his condition.
The film kind of goes where you think it will from there, finding himself, becoming a better man, trying to reconnect with that one lost love, the usual. Apatow does bring a lot of fresh humor and laughs to the proceedings though, and makes the conventional worth experiencing again as this is far more a straight forward effort then his bit crazier previous features. James L. Brooks has been heavily cited as Apatow’s influence here and that is clearly seen throughout the film; albeit a bit raunchy, crude, and dirtier.   [Read more...]