Don't Look Up: Profoundly unsettling, despite trying too hard

Don't Look Up (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor, graphic nudity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.22

Ouch.

 

This is about as scathing an indictment of modern American behavior as can be imagined.

 

Hoping to share their dire and tremendously important discovery on national television,
Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio, center right) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence, far right) little
realize they're about to be trivialized by hosts Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

Back in 2015, writer/director Adam McKay stunned us with The Big Short, a wildly entertaining and ferociously mocking blend of drama, quasi-documentary and break-the-fourth-wall cinéma vérité, in service of an economic crash course that brilliantly explained the upper-echelon machinations that drove our country off a financial cliff in 2007.

This time, McKay and co-scripter David Sirota set their sights much higher: the cognitive dissonance and blind stupidity that prompt so many Americans to deny the existence of climate change, safe covid vaccines, the results of the 2020 election, and a great deal more.

 

Willful ignorance runs rampant these days, which gives McKay and Sirota plenty to scream about. While quite a few of this film’s sarcastic bombs hit their target, Don’t Look Up isn’t as artistically tight as The Big Short, and I also miss that earlier film’s inventively cheeky directorial flourishes. Sarcasm and snark once again are in abundance, but McKay’s approach here is more dramatically conventional.

 

Perhaps that’s because the operative metaphor — and its real-world counterpart — are too sobering, too horrifying, for gleeful frivolity.

 

The Big Short was fun, whereas this one is deeply unsettling: mad-as-hell, take-no-prisoners storytelling.

 

Events kick off quietly, as university astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a new comet orbiting our solar system. Their initial excitement dwindles when Kate and a gaggle of fellow grad students watch Randall compute the comet’s trajectory on a white board, to determine whether it’ll be visible when it passes Earth.

 

The film’s most grimly impactful wallop occurs right here, as Randall — fully absorbed by complex mathematical equations — initially fails to register the implication of the zero he has just written on the board. DiCaprio sells this moment: Randall hesitates, starts to shake his head, knows he hasn’t made a mistake … but nonetheless erases the zero and empties the room. Except for Kate.

 

Computing the dimensions of the comet is similarly easy. It’s the size of Mount Everest … and if — when — it strikes Earth, in just over six months, it’ll be a planetary extinction event.

 

Well.

 

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: A rewarding stroll

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, alcohol abuse, nudity, sexual candor and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.27.18

The quickest entry to John Callahan’s caustic, macabre and self-deprecating sense of humor is to understand that this film takes its title from his 1989 autobiography, written 17 years after the traffic accident that left him a C5-6 quadriplegic.

As John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix) begins to morph into an actual human being, he's
helped along the way by the kindness and patience of Annu (Rooney Mara).

His scratchy, hilariously irreverent cartoons appeared everywhere for a time, from Omni and Harper’s to National Lampoon and Penthouse. Most notably, his work was featured for 27 years in the Portland, Ore., newspaper Willamette Week, where both he and the staff delighted in the occasional protests and boycotts by enraged readers.

That reaction remains true to this day. You can’t help laughing at most of Callahan’s work, but then — just as quickly — you wonder whether you should.

All this said, he isn’t necessarily an ideal subject for a biographical drama … particularly one that wishes to be factually and emotionally accurate. He was as aggressively confrontational as his cartoons; for quite a number of years before and after the accident, he also was an exceptionally nasty alcoholic. It’s not easy to spend two hours with such an unpleasant person, and Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t hold back; his depiction of Callahan is quite brutal at times.

But we are a species which, by nature, believes in the miracle of epiphanies … and few individuals have undergone a greater change. That isthe stuff of captivating film dramas.

Director/scripter Gus Van Sant has spent the bulk of his career crafting compelling sagas about equally challenging — and often unlikable — individuals, from Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho up through To Die For, Elephant and Paranoid Park. His films intrigue not only for their unusual characters, but also for the often non-linear manner in which he lets a saga unfold.

That’s particularly true of Don’t Worry, which structures its (more or less) chronological narrative via Callahan’s candid recollections, as depicted during numerous Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; a chance encounter with young neighborhood skateboarders; and while addressing a crowd at a popular public presentation, after he had become quite famous. These sequences are further interspersed with animated versions of Callahan’s signature cartoons.

The running thread — the moral — is consistent throughout: Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Shrug it off, whatever it is, and take control.

A valuable lesson: one that took Callahan years to recognize, understand and embrace.

Hail, Caesar! — A block, a stone, a worse than senseless thing

Hail, Caesar! (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.5.16

A new Coen brothers film usually is cause for celebration.

Not this time.

Capitol Pictures studio head Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) has just learned that his
water ballet star, DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), is pregnant. She's also
unmarried: a potentially juicy scandal waiting to be scooped up by hovering
Hollywood gossip columnists.

Hail, Caesar! is a classic study of wretched excess: a labored, overcooked, star-heavy production that isn’t nearly as funny as everybody seems to think.

I’m reminded of Steven Spielberg’s 1941, also a bloated period comedy made at a point when the then-young director thought he could do no wrong. It, too, is an overwrought mess that mostly wastes the talents of a cast that was impressive for its time.

Spielberg’s 1941 attempted to mine humor from a WWII-era storyline that proposed a Japanese submarine invasion off the California coast. Hail, Caesar!, set in Hollywood during the “nifty fifties” — when, terrified by the arrival of television, the motion picture industry’s glorious façade was beginning to show visible cracks — attempts to mine humor from (among other things) a Communist submarine invasion off the California coast.

A moment which, it must be mentioned, climaxes the film’s most protracted and thoroughly inane subplot.

At its core, though, the Coen brothers’ script is a day-in-the-life study of Hollywood studio chief Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who confronts various crises — large and small — during a typical 24 hours. His soundstages are laden with sets and stars for numerous films in various stages of production, and all are typical of the time period:

• A sophisticated drawing room melodrama, where disgruntled, mildly prissy director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) has just been saddled with corn-pone singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) as his new young protagonist;

• A sailors-at-sea musical, with song-and-dance superstar Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) channeling Gene Kelly;

• A waterlogged, Busby Berkeley-style extravaganza, headlined by swimming sensation DeeAnna Moran (Scarlet Johansson); and, most particularly...

• A biblical epic featuring famed studio leading man Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), as a Roman centurion who undergoes a moral conversion after encountering no less than Jesus himself.

True Story: In their dreams

True Story (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and disturbing content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.15

Bad movies are irritating for all sorts of reasons. Many, easy to dismiss as talentless garbage, aren’t worth fretting about.

Who's playing whom? That's the question at the core of this yawningly dull drama, as
disgraced journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill, left) attempts to get truthful answers during a
series of intimate interviews with accused killer Christian Longo (James Franco).

I get seriously annoyed, though, with the ones that show promise — particularly those with an intriguing premise, and an approach that hints at clever psychological complexity — and then fail to deliver. Utterly.

Those are infuriating, generating a level of hostility that sends viewers grumbling from the theater, wishing it were possible to reclaim those two hours of their lives.

True Story is just such a film.

At first blush, for viewers who approach it cold, the early scenes of director Rupert Goold’s big-screen debut evoke pleasant memories of 1996’s Primal Fear, with its twisty battle of wits between hotshot attorney Richard Gere and the altar boy (Edward Norton) accused to killing a respected Catholic priest.

But True Story isn’t fiction; Goold and co-scripter David Kajganich have based their film on the bizarre events actually experienced by disgraced New York Times journalist Michael Finkel, as recorded in his 2005 book, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa. That shifts this big-screen adaptation into entirely different territory ... although, in the final analysis, the distinction is moot.

It would have been unsatisfying as a fictitious drama, and it’s equally tedious as a wannabe historical record.

I walked away with two strong impressions: 1) Finkel still wants absolution for past sins, and this film ain’t gonna bring him that satisfaction — frankly, nothing should — and 2) stars James Franco and Jonah Hill appear to have viewed this project as a means to establish some “serious actor” cred. They’re doomed to equal disappointment.

This movie’s a stiff: deadly dull, clumsily executed and ultimately maddening. The storyline sets up numerous issues that demand answers, none of them forthcoming. Setting aside any attempt by Goold to achieve artistic ambiguity, the reason for failure is obvious: We’re dealing with two liars. Once this becomes obvious, as the film concludes, we can’t help feeling conned.

Granted, one character may be a pathological liar, as opposed to the one who’s perhaps only an accidental liar — and I stress the “perhaps” — but the result is the same. We’re left in the hands of unreliable narrators: the death of engaging drama.

How to Train Your Dragon 2: Not as much spark

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for fantasy action and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.13.14

Catching dragon-discharged lightning in a bottle is hard enough just once; expecting to replicate such a feat is darn near impossible.

Although Hiccup's father wants him to assume the role of village chief, the young Viking
would much rather explore distant lands astride his beloved dragon, Toothless.
Unfortunately, one of those journeys reveals a very, very nasty villain who'd love to
destroy Hiccup and everybody else in his village.

2010’s How to Train Your Dragon was, to my taste, a perfect film: a clever and luxurious expansion of the first of Cressida Cowell’s series of children’s novels, with an engaging blend of well structured characters, rich vocal talent and — most crucially — a plot that focused quietly on a boy and his rather unusual “dog,” then built to a suspenseful, exciting and unexpectedly poignant conclusion.

One could not help being touched, as well, by the authentic behavior granted Toothless, our young hero’s rare Night Fury dragon: the ever-watchful gaze, the playful curiosity, the protective instincts and the pet-like eagerness to please. The animators did a rare and wondrous thing, by concocting an animated creature — and a mythical one, at that — far more lifelike than any others brought to the big screen, dating all the way back to the gentle woodland critters of 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

All of which gave director/scripter Dean DeBlois very large reptilian shoes to fill, with this long-awaited sequel.

We can be saddened, then — although likely not surprised — that Dragon 2 doesn’t live up to its predecessor. DeBlois screwed up the formula, and he has nobody to blame but himself.

1992’s Home Alone 2 remains the textbook case of ill-advised sophomore slump. In an astonishing example of short-sightedness, everybody assumed that the key to success lay in enhancing the slapstick nonsense involving the “wet bandits” who bedeviled little Kevin McCallister, thereby overlooking all the poignant, gently tender kid-on-his-own moments that made the original’s high-comedy final act so funny in contrast. The sequel, essentially nothing but burlesque, fell completely flat.

Successful tone and pacing derive from highs and lows: a balance between the many, many elements that combine to produce an engaging narrative. As my grandmother often warned, not even ice cream sundaes could withstand becoming a steady diet; all too quickly, they’d become bland. And even, well, boring.

That’s more or less what has happened, with Dragon 2. As for why, I’m always suspicious when a filmmaker’s colleagues get jettisoned en route to a sequel. On the first Dragon, DeBlois shared directing and scripting credit with Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, The Croods), with additional writing assists from William Davies and Adam F. Goldberg. Collaboratively, they fashioned a heartwarming tale that was long on interactions between our misfit Viking hero, Hiccup, and his gruff father, Stoick; along with Hiccup’s unlikely attraction to young Viking goddess Astrid; and of course the highs and lows that accompanied Hiccup’s efforts to win the trust of the wild, wounded Toothless.

Then, and only then, did that first film pull out all the stops for its exciting third act.

The Wolf of Wall Street: A howling disappointment

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive profanity and drug use, and some violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.13

Boobs, blow and bad language.

That’s my takeaway, from the 180 minutes I wasted — nay, endured — while watching The Wolf of Wall Street.

This is where Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) feels the most comfortable, and the
most powerful: at the microphone in front of his troops at Stratton Oakmont, preparing
to deliver another do-or-die speech designed to encourage everybody to hit the
phones and fleece ever more working-class suckers out of their hard-earned savings.

Root-canal surgery would have been less painful.

Director Martin Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio have made beautiful music on numerous occasions, but this symphony of wretched excess plays more like a botched rehearsal.

There isn’t more than 20 minutes’ worth of actual narrative in Terence Winter’s sloppy excuse for a screenplay. Indeed, this plays like the parody sketch Saturday Night Live might have made of a much better movie ... or, perhaps, the Mad Magazine take on far superior material.

Great, expansive chunks of this bewildering project could have come from the improvisational, goof-laden antics of a Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow farce. Pointless exchanges of inane, profanity-laden, frat boy “dialogue” go on and on and on and on. Our stars seem to make stuff up from one scene to the next, pretending that frenzied hysteria is some reasonable substitute for actual acting, with Scorsese apparently content to let the camera roll.

That sort of babbling slapstick nonsense wears thin very quickly ... and yet it continues for what seems an eternity.

I want those three hours of my life back.

Winter’s script is adapted from Jordan Belfort’s 2007 “memoir” of the same title, a book that can be called laughably unreliable at best, perniciously self-aggrandizing at worst. Belfort was yet another opportunistic Wall Street swindler who made the most of the high-flying 1990s, largely by defrauding investors with penny stocks via the “prestigious” brokerage firm front of Stratton Oakmont.

He was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1998, investors having lost somewhere north of $200 million. Belfort served just shy of two years in federal prison, then re-invented himself as a “motivational speaker” and wrote the aforementioned book — and a sequel, Catching the Wolf of Wall Street — mostly to revel in the notoriously bad behavior he and his colleagues enjoyed while fleecing the unwary.

Actually, he’s the perfect egotistical show-off for the share-all Facebook generation.

This Is the End: Out with a whimper

This Is the End (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, and quite generously, for pervasive profanity and drug use, violence, gore, relentless crude and sexual content, and impressively graphic nudity (not all of it human)
By Derrick Bang

The devoutly religious are certain to disagree, but this tiresome vanity production is too stupid to be blasphemous.

After Emma Watson re-thinks her ill-advised decision to place her safety in the hands of
half a dozen self-centered horn dogs, she mounts an escape with the help of a handy
axe. Unfortunately, this may be a classic case of leaping from the frying pan and
directly into the fire...

It’s relentlessly vulgar, however, in the arrested adolescent manner that we’ve come to expect when Seth Rogen, James Franco and their homies assemble for “something fun.” In this case, the “fun” comes from playing themselves — no stretch there, since most have been doing that all along — and behaving badly when God proves that the Book of Revelations wasn’t mere biblical filler.

Like so many of today’s limp-noodle, man-boy comedies, This Is the End stretches a mildly amusing concept far beyond the average viewer’s patience. Actually, we know this to be true, since this film is “expanded” from a 9-minute 2007 short titled Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse. Honestly, beefing up the cast and adding another 98 minutes (!) did nothing to improve the material.

Although Rogen and Evan Goldberg uncork an impressively apocalyptic third act — they collaboratively wrote and directed this case study in wasted celluloid — one must wade through nearly an hour of tedious, contrived and self-indulgent “banter” in order to get there.

Riffing the stoner culture may have been novel and slightly daring when Cheech & Chong made Up in Smoke way back in 1978, but I’d like to think film comedy has progressed a bit since then. Rogen and Goldberg apparently didn’t get that message, since they clearly believe that merely showing a baggie of weed is enough to prompt a belly laugh.

By the same toke(n), it’s time to declare a moratorium on the faux homoeroticism that seems to pass for “cool” among some of today’s Hollywood types. When Rogen and his fellow “reality stars” aren’t chortling over how blasted they’ve gotten, they trade barbed comments apparently intended to demonstrate their hip, quasi-gayness, while nonetheless retreating to safer hetero territory whenever the tone threatens to become emasculating.

“Safer territory,” in turn, emerges in strained one-liners that make sport of bodily functions: the sort of lowest-common-denominator crudeness that once remained the province of little boys trading bad words behind the woodshed, but now has become something of a badge of pride among today’s lazy comedy writers. It’s apparently shorthand for rugged manhood.

This overworked 21st century cliché hits low ebb here during an ejaculation exchange — merely verbal, I’m happy to report — between James Franco and Danny McBride, which goes on and on and on and on. Constant Companion and I exchanged glances, and the unspoken message was obvious: Seriously? This is what film comedy has descended to?

The Watch: You definitely don't want to

The Watch (2012) • View trailer
One star. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity, vulgar sexual content, violence and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

This misbegotten train wreck represents the triumph of a pithy high-concept pitch over common sense, plot logic and artistic integrity.

Having learned that a newly discovered silver sphere is a powerful
alien weapon, our numbnuts heroes — from left, Jamarcus (Richard
Ayoade), Bob (Vince Vaughn), Evan (Ben Stiller) and Franklin (Jonah
Hill) — proceed to blow up all sorts of stuff, accompanied by much
raucous laughter. Sadly, they can't laugh hard enough to make us
viewers believe that any of this dreck is the slightest bit amusing.

The Watch may not wind up as the worst big-studio effort of 2012, but it’ll do until that one comes along.

Words simply fail me. I can’t believe this mess ever started as an actual script; it feels like so-called writers Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg got stoned one evening, jotted wild ’n’ crazy ideas onto pieces of paper, threw them in the air, assembled them randomly and then handed the stack to director Akiva Schaffer, who apparently saw no reason to argue.

Schaffer, it should be noted, was a longtime writer and director — of digital shorts — on TV’s Saturday Night Live. He paused long enough, during that tenure, to direct Andy Samberg in one of 2007’s limpest comedies, Hot Rod. Haven’t ever heard of it? That’s to your advantage; don’t go looking.

At the risk of repeating an old cliché, on the basis of that film and his “work” here on The Watch, Schaffer ain’t fit to direct traffic. Nor would I let him direct me to a market half a block away; he’d undoubtedly get it wrong.

Failed comedies can be egregiously awful, and this one certainly qualifies. The dialogue sounds under-rehearsed; the characters lack continuity or credibility; the plot sorta/kinda stumbles from one scene to the next. As is typical of too many numbnuts “doofus projects” these days, profanity and vulgarity are tossed about like spent condoms — actually one of the many running gags — in the vain hope that such elements can draw laughter. Not because any of the lines are actually funny, but ... just because.

Random dialogue exchanges are reflexively homophobic, racist, sexist and all other –ists that come to mind; about the best that can be said, is that these guys are equal-opportunity offenders.

And as bad as the limp-noodle efforts at slapstick humor are, things get even worse when Christophe Beck’s soundtrack swells with what’s intended to be feigned emotion, for a scene Schaffer apparently hopes will be heartwarming. Gaaahhh...

21 Jump Street: Frequently stumbles

21 Jump Street (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity, crude and sexual content, teen drinking and drug use, and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.16.12


Things must be pretty bad in Hollywood, if this is the week’s pick of the litter.

Having stumbled their way into learning who has been supplying an insidious
new designer drug to high school kids, Jenko (Channing Tatum, left) and
Schmidt (Jonah Hill) duck a ferocious hail of bullets and wonder what to do next.

Although not the thorough train wreck suggested by its previews, 21 Jump Street isn’t much to write home about. It’s yet another exasperating, big-screen “re-imagining” of a vintage TV drama that has — in the hands of writers Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill (who also stars) — been transformed into a dopey comedy.

I simply don’t understand this trend. We’ve seen it several times before, with equally lame big-screen spoofs of I Spy and Starsky & Hutch. These are not familiar, name-brand franchises, as with Tom Cruise’s much more reverential — and successful — update of Mission: Impossible.

No, only the original fans continue to care about stuff like I Spy, Starsky & Hutch and 21 Jump Street ... and they’re guaranteed to be infuriated by such disrespectful treatment.

Alternatively, the modern target audience coveted by these remakes isn’t old enough to recognize the references, so why bother? Is it that difficult come up with original titles and characters? Is it really necessary to insult folks who carry happy memories of the original small-screen versions?

More to the point, such re-boots would be a lot more tolerable if they were better movies.

Sigh.

The original 21 Jump Street, one of the then-fledgling Fox Network’s first shows, ran from 1987 through ’91; it updated the “cool” premise of an even earlier show, The Mod Squad (1968-73). In both cases, police departments sent baby-faced cops to infiltrate various aspects of youth culture. The trio forming the Mod Squad went after “establishment adults” preying upon groovy counter-culture types; 21 Jump Street enrolled its undercover detectives in a “typical” high school, where they confronted drug pushers, teenage prostitutes and clandestine killers ... you know, the usual high school issues.

Granted, there’s plenty of room for parody here, starting with the belief that twentysomethings could effectively blend with younger, smaller and less mature kids, and this update of 21 Jump Street does have plenty of fun with that concept. (Hill is 28; co-star Channing Tatum is 31.) But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Moneyball: Thoughtful slugger

Moneyball (2011) • View trailer for Moneyball
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.23.11


You just can’t beat the romantic, almost spiritual atmosphere of a good baseball movie.

Other sports-themed dramas — football, basketball, tennis, whatever — simply don’t deliver the emotional oomph of The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Pride of the Yankees and many, many others. Baseball movies — like the sport itself — aren’t merely about the game; they’re more akin to a religious experience.

Forced to wait in the outer office like some no-account hired hand, Oakland
Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) suspects that his efforts to
trade players with the Cleveland Indians will come to nothing ... but, at the
moment, he sees no other options. That view is about to change, as will
Beane's entire vision of how best to create a winning baseball team.

Moneyball belongs in their company: a rather unconventional entry, to be sure, but one suffused with its own type of magic.

Director Bennett Miller’s thoughtful drama, ostensibly a profile of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), actually concerns one man’s quixotic quest to re-write the fundamental principle that had driven baseball for decades: the notion that the best team could — would — be assembled by obtaining the best players money could buy.

And for “best,” insert “most expensive.” After all, a player commanding an eight-figure salary must be worth every penny, right?

Ah, but is a collection of ego-inflated prima donnas actually a team? Therein lies the question.

Scripters Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List), working from a story by Stan Chervin — who, in turn, adapted Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — have quite cleverly written the All the President’s Men of baseball, and made the result equally fascinating. Just as William Goldman spun espionage and intrigue from the grinding research and day-to-day fact-checking of newspaper reporters, Sorkin and Zaillian have made a rich, engrossing brew of economics, statistics and charts.

An impressive feat, to say the least.

Miller has made it even better with a well-cast collection of realistic characters: dreamers, pragmatists, visionaries and stubborn naysayers. Change doesn’t come without pain.

We meet Beane and his Oakland Athletics in the aftermath of the 2001 season, just as their best players are cherry-picked by other franchises with deeper pockets. The A’s are left gutted, with Beane nearly apoplectic over the realization that his team is little more than a candy store for the Yankees and other wealthier rivals. The playing field isn’t level, and he resents it.

A humiliating attempt to horse-trade with the Cleveland Indians draws Beane’s attention to somebody who seems out of place in that office: a quiet, couch-potato nebbish whose opinion inexplicably carries some weight. Beane tracks this individual to his desk — a delightful scene, well staged by Miller — and thus meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).

Funny People: Far from amusing

Funny People (2009) • View trailer for Funny People
1.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual candor and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.31.09
Buy DVD: Funny People• Buy Blu-Ray: Funny People (2-Disc Unrated Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray]

Wow ... what a tedious, self-indulgent mess.

Filmmakers who decide to become "meaningful" must be regarded with eyebrow-raised skepticism, because it's a sure sign that somebody is taking himself much too seriously. The situation inevitably occurs because the artist in question — often a director — has made buckets of money in the recent past, and therefore has the clout to be green-lighted for what amounts to an insufferable vanity project.

When Clarke (Eric Bana, far right) returns home early from a business trip, his
wife, Laura (Leslie Mann), stumbles to find a reasonable explanation to justify
the presence of long-ago lover George (Adam Sandler, left) and tag-along Ira
(Seth Rogen) in their home. Because Clarke is such an idiot -- a failing that
afflicts every character in this film -- it's not that hard a sell.

Which, in a world where poetic irony rules, flops.

Think back to Steven Spielberg, who stumbled big time with 1941, after having been such a media darling with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Recall James Cameron, parlaying his two Terminator films into the mooningly melodramatic The Abyss. Or Barry Levinson, following Rain Man and Bugsy with the jaw-droppingly dreadful Toys.

Judd Apatow's shtick always has skirted the ragged edge of cruelty, and Funny People is distastefully mean-spirited. This is a sordid little tale of morally compromised troglodytes who are intended, in Apatow's imagination, to be sympathetic protagonists in his interminable, clumsily written narrative.

They are not sympathetic. They do not deserve happiness or anything else that might be construed as a "reward." As a group, they begin this film with the ethics of snake-oil salesmen, and their bad behavior remains consistent until a thoroughly unpersuasive epilogue.

They do not learn; they do not respect even their so-called best friends; they lack sense — common, good or any other kind — and carry on like spoiled children.

All of them. All the time.

Normally, such misanthropic behavior would be held up for low comedy, as was the case with Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, both of which blended hilariously coarse dialogue with a sweet romantic underbelly. We tolerated and laughed at the former because the latter was a satisfying payoff: Steve Carell genuinely fell in love, Katherine Heigl did right by her unborn child.

Funny People, in great contrast, overflows with so much contrived melancholy and faux poignance that it becomes the sort of purple melodrama that Tom Servo and the 'bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have roasted with glee.

Worse yet, this film gives us no satisfaction: nothing to be pleased with, as the lights finally rise after 146 interminable minutes.