Huffington Post:

While accepting the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Comedy film, “Bridesmaids” producer slammed Jerry Lewis for a sexist remark the legendary comedian once made.

“Jerry Lewis once said that he didn’t think women were funny, so I’d just like to say, with all respect, ‘F*ck you!’” Apatow exclaimed at the end of his speech to cheers from the audience.

Lewis made the comment in 1998 at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. He told an audience during a Q&A session that “I don’t like any women comedians” and “A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

With its all female leading cast headed up by co-writer Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids” scored critical raves, took in $288 million worldwide and is nominated for three Golden Globes. Though it seems silly to think that there were skeptics, its success proved to many in Hollywood that women can anchor successful broad comedies, not just the romantic comedies and “Sex and the City” films.

Jerry Lewis pushing ninety and this jerk is making his life miserable over a 14 year-old remark?

How ballsy.

Why not just get on his knees and beg for love?

Just ask the folks who gave us “The A-Team,” the wannabe blockbuster that made us pity the fools who sank good money into it. Now, the creatively-impaired film industry is about to give us “21 Jump Street,” the film version of the TV show which gave Johnny Depp his first taste of fame.

The new film, hitting theaters Spring 2012, stars a thinner Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as detectives working undercover in high school to sniff out a drug ring.

Depp will have a cameo in the film, a belated thank you for the property which launched his career. We don’t see Depp in the trailer, nor do we get many laughs from the two-plus minute tease.

Tatum is hardly the first actor who comes to mind when you think “action comedy,” although he showed some welcome self-awareness playing the stud Winona Ryder hooks up with in “The Dilemma.” Hill’s comic chops are fare more reliable, although some of his best work relies on the presence of uber-comedy producer Judd Apatow.

“21 Jump Street” still could click if the film shrewdly milks the fact that both detectives look a decade younger than their high school “peers.” For a movie with franchise written all over it, the first trailer feels a bit played out – already.

After all, the original is only 12 years old, and not only did we get two theatrical sequels but a gaggle of straight-to-DVD ones we’re better off forgetting.

But here comes ‘American Reunion’ all the same.

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The new trailer for the April 2012 release hits on the expected plot points – Stifler’s mom, Jim’s Dad and, well, that’s mostly it. What’s shocking is how tame it all feels. Yes, you might get a little buzz from seeing the original cast members again – how did they land Tara Reid? – but for an envelope-shredding franchise the new films appears … safe.

A lot has changed in comedy circles since 1999. Judd Apatow stormed the humorous beaches with grand fare like ‘Superbad’ and ‘Knocked Up.’ Meanwhile, the Farrelly brothers proved their button pushing days are behind them with the mediocre ‘Hall Pass’ and the forthcoming ‘Three Stooges’ film in development.

Maybe all ‘American Reunion’ can do is let us watch old friends stare middle age square in the eye. Heck, we know the feeling.

…AND NOW A WORD FROM LIBERTARIAN COMEDIAN WILL FRANKEN…

“Hello gang at Big Hollywood. This is libertarian San Francisco comedian Will Franken (www.willfranken.com) here. I hope you enjoy this clip. It’s my interpretation of the ideological “handshake” between a multiculturalism-obsessed West and radical Islam. What happens when cultural relativism escapes the confines of the universities and finds its way into our oldest and most cherished institutions? Well, using a little character comedy, a few sound cues and some costume changes, I surmise the possibility of Christianity morally equivocating itself out of existence — leaving a barbaric monster to emerge in the vacuum. After a nearly four-year hiatus, I’ll be reprising this piece Saturday, July 30th here in San Francisco. Keep up the good work, BH!”

Thanks, Will.

Break a leg this weekend.

For a preview, see Will in politically incorrect action right here.

–PEE WEE HERMAN RETURNS? –
 

I’m as big of fan of Tim Burton’s 1985 “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” as anyone, but who really wants to see a fifty-something guy connected with a salacious arrest play a man-child character developed over a quarter century ago?

There was something magical and unique about the Pee Wee character, but there was also an innocence that has since been shattered — not only by Reubens personal behavior but the fact that the Pee Wee character himself got laid in his second film.

I believe in second chances and all that, and Reubens is a talented guy who’s more than paid the price for his stupidity. But you can’t put the innocence genie back in the bottle with that character. The whole appeal of Pee Wee was that he was untouched by the outside world and the child-like quality the bubble of his life afforded him.

Unfortunately for all of us, that bubble’s been burst and all of Apatow’s men can’t put it back together again.

–‘Star Wars: The Complete Saga’  Blu-ray Release Set for September 12th–

All I want to know is if Han shoots first. If he does, if that version is available here, I might just pick this one up.

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WHO TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER DURING COMIC-CON 

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CLASSIC PICK FOR SATURDAY JULY 23, 2011

TCM:

8:00 PM  EST: Cool Hand Luke (1967) –  A free-spirited convict refuses to conform to chain-gang life. Dir: Stuart Rosenberg Cast:  Paul Newman , George Kennedy , J. D. Cannon. C-126 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

The story of a man who refuses to give in to the collective or to give up his right to be an individual is one of my top ten, favorite films of all time — a film I never get tired of watching and re-watching, and after thirty-years, never will.  From the acting to the editing to the cinematography, what we have here is a brilliant piece of filmmaking that works a theme every red-blooded American conservative should embrace whole-heartedly.

At the time of its release, “Cool Hand Luke” was seen as a piece of counter-culture filmmaking, a shot across the bow of The Establishment and The Man. Well, today it still is, only who The Establishment and The Man is is now the joyless Left who want to count our calories, separate our trash and choose our lightbulbs.

In one of the greatest screen performances ever, Paul Newman personifies what it means to be a free individual and therefore what it means to be an American. His crime was a stupid one, a crime against the government. He got drunk and cut the heads off The Man’s parking meters — a symbol of the government’s boiling frog intrusion on our liberties. And for that crime, The Man decided to “re-educate” Luke; to strip away his very essence until he became one of Them.

In return, Luke chose to Live Free or Die and might have found some faith in God along the way.

If I had kids, this would be something I would be as eager to show them as any Disney or Pixar offering.  

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Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

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Wiig, so long a fixture on Saturday Night Live, makes a persuasive claim to movie stardom here. She plays Annie, a woman edging into her late thirties with little to show for her life to date. Annie once had her own business, a specialty cake shop; when it went under she lost all her money and, shortly thereafter, her last loser boyfriend. Now she’s back to sharing an apartment with an obnoxious roommate (Matt Lucas) and his annoyingly ever-present fat sister (slobalicious Rebel Wilson). Her love life consists of demeaning hookups with a slick creep (Jon Hamm must do more comedy) for whom she’s a third-tier booty call. And she’s been reduced to working in a jewelry store, where she struggles, often unsuccessfully, to stifle nasty wisecracks about the engagement rings she has to sell.

When her lifelong best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) suddenly becomes engaged, it throws Annie’s dead-end life into stark relief. She gratefully agrees to be Lillian’s maid of honor; but then a new friend of Lillian’s moves in on the big event—rich, beautiful, hyper-organized Helen (Rose Byrne)—and Annie is slowly edged out of her key nuptial role. A series of head-butting confrontations ensues—among them a bout of snarling champagne toasts at Lillian’s engagement party—on the way to the climactic Annie-Helen showdown you know must ultimately come.

You can read the full review at Reason.

Newsweek scribe Ramin Setoodeh writes about the trend in the liberal magazine’s latest edition. Setoodeh bemoans the fact that some of the best films lately take a too sober view of society. On that we can agree.

Then, Setoodeh whips out his trusty Bush bashing cudgel and starts a whacking:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies.

He then compares the recent Oscar nominees to ones during the end of President Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House – noting such gut-busters as “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Full Monty” to burnish his case.

Suffice to say Oscar voters have a plethora of comedies to choose from every year, but they simply go toward films which have that Academy vibe.

Biopics and Bush bashing documentaries usually lead the way.

But big screen comedies enjoyed  a renaissance during the Bush years, partly thanks to the Judd Apatow machine. Consider “Wedding Crashers,” “Superbad” and “Borat” as just a sampling of the side-splitting films from the last eight years.

And, in a just world, a smart, sweet and bawdy comedy like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” would have earned a Best Picture nomination. Too bad Oscar voters look down their collective noses at such material.

Comedies, we’ve learned over the years, need not apply when Oscar season begins.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a film like “Annie Hall” would be an Oscar favorite today, even though it walked away with the 1977 Best Picture statuette.

Blaming Bush for the glut of oh-so serious movies makes little sense – unless you’re writing for a magazine eager to keep slamming the former President while apologizing for the current Commander-in-Chief.

I remember the night I first walked in to see “Virgin” back in 2005. I thought that it would just be one big sex comedy poking fun at the titular character. But as written by Apatow and the film’s star, Steve Carell, the film actually turned every convention one might have expected upside down.

Carell’s Andy had the “problem” of being a 40 year-old virgin, but after initally laughing at him and trying to get him laid, Andy’s co-worker friends slowly start to respect him. One who brags about cheating on his girlfriends winds up turning monogamous when he sees his impending baby on an ultrasound, while another may find his perfect match with a kinky gal but by the end it’s true love nonetheless.

More pertinently, Andy’s journey into true love with a divorced mom played by Catherine Keener involves him hiding his sexual neophyte status by challenging her to have 20 dates together before they have sex. She finds it unusual, but as a cute montage winds up showing, the film shows that getting to know each other well is more important to a healthy long-term relationship than casual sex.
 
Along the way, the film also takes sharply pointed stabs at our sexually saturated culture, both in a scene where Andy tries to run from a giant bus ad featuring a couple in the throes of passion only to stumble across other sexual images everywhere else around him, and in a particularly strong scene that takes dead aim at how Planned Parenthood-style clinics would rather push an anything-goes-with-a-condom message at teens than to encourage abstinence.
 
Ultimately, Andy and his beloved wait until after they’re married to have their first joyous moments of ecstasy together, and he’s so happy by the end result that he and the entire cast burst into a surreally funny dance routine to the strains of the giddy hippie classic “The Age of Aquarius.” And the movie broke both Carell and Apatow into the mainstream bigtime by scoring $120 million in the US alone, with my opening-night audience walking out at the end in excited discussions about the film‘s refreshingly different attitudes.
 
How many other films with those kinds of messages would have been played outside of a religious event?
 
Leap forward two years, and Apatow took on unplanned pregnancy in “Knocked Up,” where a stoned slacker played by Seth Rogen impregnates an ambitious young TV personality played by Katherine Heigl during a one-night stand. Heigl’s character’s mother tells her not to blow her new on-camera career and that she can have a “real” baby later – and that moment is what propels her to keep her baby and sets the movie on its exploration of how the stoned dude is ruining his life with his irresponsibility and shows him the joys of putting down the bong and picking up a relationship.
 
Apatow took some heat for the film’s stance on abortion, with the liberal newspaper LA Weekly grilling him about the scene between Heigl and her mother. The Weekly writer asked him why he took the pro-life route and compared his film to the Romanian drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” which depicts a woman’s search for an illegal abortion in the former Communist nation. Apatow pointed out that if an abortion had occurred, “Knocked Up” would have been 15 minutes long and that while there’s a place for “4 Weeks” in the market, he doesn’t have to make a  film that way.
 
“Knocked Up” even took a strong whack at the stoner lifestyle, as  Rogen’s character has to learn to put away the pot and get a job in order to step up and truly be a good man for Heigl and their baby. As the LA Weekly noted in a Scott Foundas article on the film:

That extends to the film’s laissez-faire depiction of drug use and alcohol consumption – a subject about which Apatow has mixed feelings. He is himself strongly anti-drug, he says, “but at the same time, as a filmmaker, I just need to show things exactly as they are. I hope, on some level, I’m indicating to the audience: You probably shouldn’t do  this, that you can’t be the high guy when the earthquake happens and you have to figure out how to shut off the gas.”

And now we have “Funny People,” which doesn’t directly address a moral quandary in its title, but which explores the attitude of entitlement some people have in which they think they can pursue whomever they want romantically, damn the consequences. When Adam Sandler’s lead  character, superstar comic George Simmons, overcomes a bout with cancer  (I didn’t spoil it – that’s revealed in the trailer) he sets out to get the Girl Who Got Away, not caring at first that she’s now married to another guy and has kids.
 
(SPOILER ALERT) Simmons does have a quickie with his dream woman, but ultimately he comes to realize that her husband isn’t a jerk and his dream girl and her husband opt to forgive each other and stay together, while Simmons walks out of their way.
 
Once again, marriage is upheld as the ideal and traditional values win. The fact that the film’s packed with dick jokes still doesn’t change  that, and helps lead people who might be looking for a naughty night out at the movies to have a morally sound one as well.

Funny People showed much less audience draw than the great majority of Apatow’s and actor Adam Sandler’s previous efforts, and its failure to connect big with audiences cannot be blamed on any recent disappointments. Apatow’s Knocked Up and Sandler’s Bedtime Stories were both excellent films that did very well at the box office.

The magnitude of the disappointment for the Funny People writer-director and its star was summed up well by Reuters:

* This will likely be the eighth straight movie that Apatow produced that failed to top $100 million. (“Step Brothers” and “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the latter of which he also wrote, just reached the mark but didn’t surpass it.)

* Opening weekend has been a hallmark of Apatow in his robust years. But only two of these past eight films opened to at least $30 million — after the three previous pictures all did.

* This month marks exactly two years since Apatow Prods. had a bona fide breakout along the lines of a “Talladega Nights” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” — the Greg Mottola-directed “Superbad,” which earned $121 million.

* After “Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” Apatow was touted for his rare ability to bring overseas audiences to U.S. comedies. That was then, this is now. Outside of “Zohan,” none of his previous seven pictures have topped $150 million internationally. “Funny People” isn’t likely to change that.

I haven’t yet seen the film, but it seems likely that this is a misstep on Apatow’s part and not a portent of inevitable things to come. It’s always tempting for comedians to attempt overtly serious projects, but Funny People is nothing like Woody Allen’s lugubrious and overwrought Interiors.It’s clear that Apatow tried to be funny in this film, and the inclusion of serious themes is certainly in line with the other films he has directed, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.

Sandler, of course, has done films such as Punch-Drunk Love and Spanglish but always managed to get back to what he does best. Both Sandler and Apatow have exemplified the contemporary habit of conveying positive ideas and moral messages through works of culture employing vulgar and trashy surface elements. The shortcoming of Funny People was an evident failure to assure audiences that the vulgarity and messages would be placed in an enjoyable dramatic and comic context.

That suggests that Funny People is more of a bump in the road for both filmmakers, and that they’ll both be able to move forward from the relative disappointment of their current film. However, the trailers and other publicity for their next project will have to make it clear that it offers audiences the same sort of enjoyment and edification their previous films have given.

Filmmakers in general must learn that vulgarity, explicit sexual content, absurd story lines, mad violence, and the like are not what appeal to most of their audience film-goers attend movies with such content because of the other good things in the films, specifically the positive messages and aesthetic enjoyment to be found behind the trashy surface nonsense. Emphasizing the former is the way to both artistic and audience success.

In a culture that openly celebrates vulgarity, mistaking it for authenticity, it’s difficult for artisans and audiences alike to see what really makes for good culture, including good popular culture. But the market sends strong signals, and filmmakers and other culture-makers do well to listen and learn.

That happy-sad dichotomy is at the heart of the new film “Funny People,” in which Adam Sandler plays Simmons in a terrific performance that no doubt draws on his own experiences as a wildly successful comedy star. As written and directed by Judd Apatow in his third film, following “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” the movie has an intimate awareness of the pain that often lies behind the laughter generated by our modern court jesters. 

Yet, while its potent blend of comedy and pathos is richly entertaining and moving in the first 90 minutes, the fact that “Funny People” tops out at a staggering 146 minutes will leave viewers feeling the same sort of annoyance that comedy club customers feel when a comic ignores the light to get off stage. The film recovers somewhat in its closing 15 minutes, but it’ll be interesting to see whether filmgoers are willing enough to forgive the interminable 45 minutes that drag it down from four-star-classic status to give Apatow his third $100 million-grossing blockbuster hit. 

The film scores its best moments and gets right down to business as Sandler receives his doctor’s grim prognosis at the end of the opening credits. Receiving the news that he’s almost guaranteed to die, Simmons returns to a comedy club for the first time in five years, only to leave the audience depressed rather than entertained. 

**Mild Spoilers Coming** 

But in the wings is Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a young comic who’s a rabid Simmons fan. Catching the star’s attention, he winds up getting a seeming dream gig as his well-paid assistant and opening act. But when Simmons beats his disease (a fact the trailer reveals), he tracks down his old girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann), who’s now married with children, and tries to disrupt her marriage, Simmons reveals a dark, selfish side and Ira has to decide whether to interfere and risk his career. 

It’s in the final hour that Simmons tempts Laura, and it’s that shift in plot focus that nearly ruins the film. Laura’s husband Clarke (Eric Bana) isn’t a bad enough guy for audiences to root against him, resulting in the fact that the film’s ostensible romantic leads become unlikable for most of the film’s remainder. 

Mann is writer-director Apatow’s real-life wife, and he seems determined at all costs to provide her a leading role after her much sharper supporting roles in his first two films. Her performance here is great as well, but the relationship between her and Simmons feels like a different movie, literally in the fact that the plotline doesn’t fit the overall film well, and figuratively in the fact that it also feels like an extra full-length film. Someone needs to remind the studio executives that giving a director final cut, when ego can get in the way of solid judgment, isn’t a good idea. 

What’s in the film’s favor is that the performances – including a galaxy of major-star cameos - are all terrific, and that the film is perhaps the first in Hollywood history to get the world of stand-up comedy (I’m also a professional comedian) right, after painfully misguided garbage like the Tom Hanks ‘80s film “Punchline.” If you’re willing to endure the boring parts, you’ll still emerge with a smile on your face and find yourself quoting the funniest lines.

Adam Sandler is George Simmons, a comedian/movie star as wealthy and popular as Sandler, but having turned his back on his family and cheated on his one true love, Laura (Leslie Mann), he’s now left with only “show-biz friends,” which means he has no friends at all. In-between making films like “Merman” (“Splash” with a guy mermaid) and private-jetting to corporate standup gigs that pay $300k, this desolate 40 year-old haunts a Malibu mansion and looks to fill his emptiness with willing groupies and everything money can buy.

After being diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia, George is given an 8% chance of survival and put on experimental medicines that only seem to quicken his deterioration. He has no one, so he tells no one, but for some element of human contact he returns to his roots in the L.A. comedy clubs. This is where George meets Ira (Seth Rogen), a struggling comedian much better at writing jokes than delivering them. Needing a joke writer, an assistant, and even a friend, George hires Ira to be all three and a fascinating, complicated and unpredictable relationship is born.

The film’s first half takes us into the ultra-competitive world of show business and standup comedy, using Ira and his two roommates as a microcosm. The three of them are close but always simmering just below the surface is a fierce rivalry. Mark (Jason Schwartzman) is a sitcom star who leaves his $25,000 paychecks lying around, Leo (Jonah Hill) is just starting to make money as a performer, but Ira’s relegated to grabbing open mic nights and working full time behind the deli counter of a grocery store. Apatow obviously understands this world very well because the relationships feel 100% authentic, especially the tensions that never leave these three, even in the best of times.  

The narrative takes an abrupt turn in the second half, way outside the world of Hollywood and into suburban family life, when George re-enters Laura’s life. Though it’s been twelve years and Laura’s now married with two daughters, imminent death stirs up old feelings between them and George decides he wants her back. Because her Australian husband (Eric Bana) is unfaithful, George proceeds under the assumption all’s fair. But things aren’t as black and white as he thought, and this includes his own feelings.

Apatow’s genius is how effortlessly he pulls two completely different worlds into one cohesive film without breaking the spell. You have to credit the director’s skills as a screenwriter, but the whole show is the single and separate emotional journeys of George and Ira, and both actors playing those roles deliver revelatory, career-high performances.

Sandler’s always shown promise as a dramatic actor; the problem has been the films themselves. Even more than the under-appreciated “Punch Drunk Love,”  ”Funny People” gives Sandler a showcase any serious actor would kill for and boy does he deliver. George is alternately pathetic, cruel, charming and despairing, and Sandler hits each note perfectly. Never once do you catch him acting. Never once does he stoop to pathos. Rogen, an actor I’ve never warmed to until now, is just as good. Finally he shakes off the cold hostility that’s undermined everything he’s done thus far and delivers an accessible, average guy (though driven) worth rooting for. Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife) is, as always, fetching and compelling.

At 146 minutes, the pacing is certainly deliberate and measured, but the butt never numbed and I was sorry when it ended. The language is crude. Everyone’s obsessed with sex, especially the male member, but unlike Apatow’s other films these moments don’t feel look-at-this-iconic-moment forced. The world’s so perfectly realized that, coming from these characters, the “dick” stuff is more charming than off-putting and feels as natural as breathing.

Without giving anything away, what’s most impressive about this terrific film is how difficult and troubled George’s journey is. When he remembers he’s dying, he really is a changed man. When he forgets, the closed, self-involved “star” quickly returns. This is why the film, length and all, works so damn well. From moment to moment, you never know (especially in the second half) which George you’re dealing with. It’s a perfect thread of emotional tension that tightens until the very last scene, which, for my money, is one of subtlest, sweetest and best of the year.

I was wrong about Apatow, I was wrong about Rogen, and when it comes to movies I love being this kind of wrong.