( CNN ) -- Comedy is hard ; dying is easy . Any stand-up will tell you that . Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen play comedians in `` Funny People . '' Let 's have a hand , then , for Judd Apatow . Hollywood 's most successful contemporary comedy producer is n't resting on his laurels but continues to push toward risky subject matter : male sexual insecurity in `` The 40-Year-Old Virgin , '' unwanted pregnancy in `` Knocked Up '' -- and now the big C. No , not cancer -- though Adam Sandler 's superstar comedian George Simmons is stricken with an appropriately eccentric form of leukemia . No , this latest film 's true subject is Celebrity and the funny things it does to people . Apatow 's most personal ( and also most self-indulgent ) film , `` Funny People , '' shuffles between three competitive Angelino roommates scrambling to grasp a rung on the showbiz ladder ( Seth Rogen , Jonah Hill , and Jason Schwartzman ) , Simmons ' multimillion-dollar Malibu mansion and the L.A. comedy clubs that sometimes bridge the gap between anonymity and fame . Apatow and Sandler know these worlds well enough . The movie begins , in fact , with old home video footage of young Adam goofing off , making prank phone calls while his roommate Judd sniggers behind the camera . It 's one of the few times we see Sandler really having fun and cutting loose . This is mostly a restrained , subdued and admirably unsentimental performance . It feels natural that Simmons -- faced with his dire prognosis -- should return to the comedy circuit to wrestle with his imminent extinction before a roomful of strangers , even as he decides to keep his condition a secret from everyone around him . It 's actually not so hard in his case because he does n't have any real friends , only `` showbiz friends . '' The exception is Ira Wright ( Rogen ) , a struggling young comic who lucks into a job as his hero 's joke writer slash personal assistant . Simmons is by turns demanding , generous , friendly and abusive , and Ira could n't be happier . The cross-currents are intriguing : He 's getting his first taste of the high life , just as George is trying to savor his last days by reliving his first steps on the circuit . True to form , Apatow negotiates the perilous terrain of existential doubt with his fall-back weapon of choice , the penis joke . Some of these are choice ( Ira 's real last name is `` Wiener , '' pronounced `` Whiner '' ) , but many , many more feel flabby and redundant . There 's even an Andy Dick joke , in the form of Andy Dick himself -- one of several celebrity cameos , the oddest of which is surely Eminem , wondering aloud if George would n't be better off dead . We must be approaching the 80-minute mark by then , about the time many comedies start wrapping things up . But it 's a question that does n't seem to have occurred to Simmons or the filmmakers before , and it spurs Apatow on to develop another hour of additional material in which George , miraculously recovered , pursues the love of his life ( Leslie Mann ) , Ira in tow , without much consideration for her two daughters or her husband ( Eric Bana ) . It 's as if the movie bred its own sequel . There 's plenty of funny stuff here . Bana has a ball as the obtuse Aussie , but despite all the blue jokes , this is a more modulated , pensive effort than Apatow 's previous hits . He 's improved , a little , as a director ( perhaps the credit belongs to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski , who ensures that for once it does n't all look like a sitcom ) , but Apatow is still in dire need of a good editor . His instincts are generous . He wants to give us the six-course meal , and to go around the table , give everybody the chance to tell us a funny story . As a result `` Funny People '' is consistently entertaining but also rather grueling -- as if we 're watching two or three different movies at the same time . At least one of these -- the tribulations of the young roomies -- we 've seen before , and amusing as these guys are , they properly belong in the deleted scenes category . But Apatow is n't one to kill his babies , that 's for sure . He 's more likely to write them an additional scene or three . ( Mann is Mrs. Apatow , and their two daughters also figure large . ) Still , if you 're not averse to too much of a good-ish thing , and can stomach another of those terminal Hollywood illnesses that leaves the patient with no discernible ill-effects , `` Funny People '' is a fairly shrewd and nonjudgmental dissection of how celebrity skews and contaminates even the most intimate relationships . The rich and famous are n't the only narcissists in this game , it seems . We 're all a bit funny that way . `` Funny People '' is rated R and runs 146 minutes . For Entertainment Weekly 's take , click here .
` ` Funny , '' has some funny -- and insightful -- stuff to say about life . Judd Apatow film stars Adam Sandler as ailing cartoonist . It 's main drawback is it 's too long , but it makes up for it , says John Charity .