But by the end of its almost 21/2 hours - after more phallus-centric jokery than you can shake a, um, stick at - Funny People turns out to be fairly predictable, and not so rough. In a thoroughly satisfying way.
A comedy about showbiz celebrity (it's lonely at the top), about male bonding, men and women, sex and selfishness, and the fraternity (with a few females included) of stand-up, Funny People is sappy, loopy, inspired, hysterical.
For Apatow - writer/director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up and producer of a veritable slew of raunchy comic meditations on adolescence and addled adulthood - Funny People represents an ambitious summing up of his pet themes. He grapples with issues like marriage, family, infidelity, and, yes, death. But the juvenile nincompoopery, and the poop jokes, are there, too. And did we mention the obsession with male genitalia?
And so, armed with his grim prognosis, George retreats to his beachfront manse to wallow in self-pity. He gets misty-eyed watching his hits (Re-do, Mer-man, My Best Friend Is a Robot). He does a club gig - and runs into a young, struggling comic, Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), there. George hires Ira to write gags, and to be his personal assistant. This is a step up from the supermarket deli counter where he works, and Ira - who shares a Hollywood apartment with a sitcom star (an amusingly vain Jason Schwartzman) and a fellow struggling comic (Jonah Hill) - takes the job.
And then he takes a private jet with George for his big-paycheck performance at MySpace headquarters. In its details and depiction of the life of a Hollywood star - pampered, protected - Funny People feels very real.
