Thursday, August 6, 2009

Judd Apatow is either really really smart or really really lucky

I saw Judd Apatow's "Funny People" on the weekend and actually kind of really liked it, maybe even really liked it a lot, at times, at those times that I didn't think that this was just a bunch of really amateurish acting with some middle-of-the-road writing that was going to make a hell of a lot of money.

This brings me to a question:

Is Judd Apatow, who has produced pretty much every comedy you can name in the last five years, and who previous to "Funny People" wrote and directed "The 40 Year Old Virgin," and "Knocked Up," talented? And if so, how talented? Do his comedies even dare rival my dearly beloved comedies of the 80s (the Bill Murray era, the era of "Fletch" oh Fletch!)?

Cause I find myself really flip-flopping on this guy. You?

4 comments:

  1. Rather liked "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up".

    Bill Murray is still quite good in non-comic.

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  2. You could even say Murray hit his prime in non-comic "Lost in Translation." You can keep "Broken Flowers" though. And honestly, other than the utter brilliance of his performance in "Rushmore" how can you top his out-and-out comic performance in "Groundhog Day?"

    And, about the Apatow movies "rather liked" is exactly the point. They are "rather" good. Good, solid seven and a halfs to offer a very obscure quote from a movie starring Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman and a pre-teen Natalie Portman.

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  3. Do you think people notice your status updates here? Will you write about these plays please. Sometimes people could be unusually interested in what you've watched, read and (dis)continued.

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  4. Well, you're the first to mention my profile updates so at least I know that someONE is noticing. At any right, I have fun with them. I'm glad to discuss the plays, but thought that because they are so location specific, if you aren't near Toronto you'll not be able to see them.

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