50/50

50/50 is less a comedy about cancer, and more just a serious film about cancer that happens to be quite funny at times. Knowing that it was based on the writer's own experience, it's not hard to figure out how the movie will end, but on its way there there's plenty of raw emotion and dramatic weight to scenes that require it, so it's definitely not the easiest movie co-starring Seth Rogen to watch that you'll ever see. I thought the script did an excellent job of balancing the crap that the main character has to go through and not sugar-coating the tough reality of being sick with the required levity of a wisecracking best friend and some romantic elements. It allows the movie to be respectful of the pain and loss cancer can cause without getting too self-serious or overindulgent in examining the suffering of human existence. Not every moment is perfect, but the movie is sincere and pretty consistent rewarding.

The cast is also pretty solid, with a mix of younger stars and talented industry veterans. Joseph Gordon-Levitt had to step in at the last minute, but I thought he was good as usual. His character isn't as charming as he usually is, since a lot of the time he's weak and sick and in an understandable bad mood. But he stays likable anyway, and somehow makes being a cancer patient seem relatable. Rogen is actually friends with the writer in real life, so in a way he's acting out something that's already happened to him, and while he doesn't exactly have to do a lot of serious acting, his character is an important one for keeping the story balanced and he's fine as his usual Seth Rogen self. Anna Kendrick's role definitely reminded me of her part in Up in the Air playing a woman who seems a bit young to be in the position she is professionally, and again makes that sort of character sympathetic with a mix of quirks and flaws. There are other characters who come and go throughout the movie to varying effect, but I thought the scenes featuring Gordon-Levitt and one of the other two were usually the best in the movie. I guess it was a bit too much of a raunchy (dialogue-wise, anyway) comedy to get serious award attention, but it's definitely one of the better movies from last year that I've seen.

Undeclared

Undeclared is sort of a companion piece to Freaks and Geeks; a Judd Apatow-produced TV series, taking place in college instead of high school, that was canceled after just one season. And it's pretty good, though not quite the classic that I've seen some people describe it is. Just like Geeks, I actually saw several episodes back when it was airing, but it's just now that I've managed to see the whole thing. It's generally enjoyable, and the cast is surprisingly recognizable and likable. Neither of the women are very prevalent today, though they can both be seen here or there, and obviously Apatow staples Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel are there. The most surprising thing though was seeing Charlie Hunnam as pretty-boy womanizer Lloyd, speaking in his native English accent. I'm not sure how he ended at up going to a less-than-prestigious school in northern California, but it makes it even funnier that he's so close to the location for his current role as the protagonist of Sons of Anarchy. He's amazingly different considering the shows aired only six years apart, although some of his tough guy ability does shine through, especially in the episode where he teaches Baruchel's Steven how to fight like a Brit.

For a show about college, there's hardly any school stuff involved. There are a couple scenes with one of the guys in class, and a plot where a few characters pay Will Ferrell to write papers for them, but otherwise the show is all about the parts of college that everybody likes remembering; hanging out with friends at the dorm, and some of the weirder stuff that can come out of that. It's really a show all about how relationships develop, romantic or otherwise, and the setting is just a good place for that to happen since everybody is a stranger and eager to meet new people. The focus is mostly on Steven and his uneasy courtship with Lizzie, but everyone gets an opportunity to do something. There's also some stuff with Steven's dad, who spends a lot more time around Steve than he expected after he separates from his mom, which provides a few laughs as well as some perspective on the whole thing.

But yeah... it's not as good as Geeks, nor as funny as any of the real greatest comedies of the last decade. I think a big part of it is that the Apatow style of comedy just doesn't translate well from R rated movies to network television, and the writers weren't quite good enough to overcome that. It's hard to take things seriously when college students refer to someone getting denied from hooking up at a party as "crotchblocking". There are some pretty brilliant moments, especially when Lizzie's weird, jealous boyfriend played by Jason Segel gets involved, but for the most part I really wasn't laughing that much. It's a show with a strong enough foundation that I wished there could have been more of it, but it's no real great loss, especially with the success most of the people involved have seen since it ended. Nice show, not my favorite.

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks is a show from a decade ago that was liked by everyone who saw it. Unfortunately, the number of people who saw it was too small, and it was canceled after one season. It's still relatively well known today though, because it was produced by and starred several names that are still big today, most notably Judd Apatow and his favored actors Jason Segel, James Franco, and Seth Rogen. The trio form the "freaks", new friends of protagonist Lindsay Weir who prefer smoking pot and jamming in their garage band to focusing on school work. Lindsay's young brother Sam and his two friends played by Samm Levine and additional Apatow veteran Martin Starr are the geeks, who have less trouble with grades but have to worry about bullies and getting girls to notice them.

The cast is rounded out by Busy Philipps as Franco's girlfriend and the Weir siblings' parents, both of whom I don't recall seeing elsewhere but add a lot to the show, especially Joe Flaherty as the stern but lovable father, who might actually be my favorite character despite the good work by the more famous cast members. There's also a ton of easily recognizable actors in supporting and guest roles, such as David Krumholtz as Levine's older brother, Jason Schwartzman as a guy who can get fake IDs, Shia LaBeouf as the former school mascot, Joel from Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a guy who won't let disco go, and Biff from Back to the Future as a somewhat misguided but well-meaning gym teacher.

The show takes place in the early 80s, but it has a more timeless feel thanks to the nature of the storylines, which probably won't be going away for a while. Lindsay is tired of being an ace student and wants to have new experiences, frequently butting heads with her parents' wishes. And Sam and his friends try to deal with getting embarrassed in class and wondering if they'll ever find a way to get more friends, or at least stop getting picked on. I saw a lot of the show when it was on air, but I've been meaning to go back and watch the whole thing for a while. Once I did, it was like I had never stopped watching. Some of the moments they go for are a bit cheesy or forced, but for the most part it's one of the most realistic takes on the high school experience you'll ever see in the media, especially from the outcast's point of view. It struck a chord with me being pretty similar to the geeks especially, as they ask for video games for their birthdays and play Dungeons & Dragons instead of going to parties.

Sam and Lindsay get the most screen time, but pretty much every main character has a real chance to shine despite only 18 episodes being made, like Starr's mother dating a teacher and Levine discovering his father's secret in one of the greatest ever TV moments. Among the students, Franco and Segel give the best overall performances, and Segel's troubling emotional and domestic issues in particular are well handled. I don't know what the plan was if the show got a chance to really grow, but what there is here is just a unique experience, pretty much perfect for what it tries to be. I can't imagine many people not seeing at least one sympathetic character they can relate to. Seeing it get canceled was possibly my first experience with that kind of heartbreak, and watching it ten years later it still tugs on those strings.

Funny People

After creating two very good comedies with a bit of heart and building a movie empire as a producer, Judd Apatow returned last year with his third film, which has quite a bit more focus on sentiment rather than laughs. I saw a lot of people skeptical of his ability to pull this off, although I would guess most of them haven't seen Freaks and Geeks. I had no issue with the idea of Funny People, and it's successful in a lot of ways. The fact that it's not a great movie isn't because Apatow shouldn't try to be serious, it's just that a large chunk of the movie ends up being pretty unwatchable.

It's an odd thing, really. The movie's dangerously long for what could still be called a comedy, approaching two and a half hours. But Adam Sandler gives a surprisingly good performance as an actor and comedian who finds out that he has a very dangerous disease, and tries to get back to his stand up roots. Seth Rogen is his typical likable self, playing a much less confident version of himself who's struggling to make ends meet and gets hired by Sandler to be his assistant and help write jokes. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are both very good as his roommates who he must occasionally butt heads with because this movie is more dramatic. For reasons I'll get into in a moment, the movie needs a love interest for Rogen, and Aubrey Plaza does her usual sarcastic thing pretty well in that position. It was funny seeing the origins of Aziz Ansari's Raaaaaaaandy character, and tons of people make cameos as themselves, either in casual interactions with Sandler's character or in brief snippets from his fake filmography.

For the most part, the movie manages a good balance between the humor and the drama, with its great cast doing the typical improv-heavy vulgar conversation thing in one scene and seriously considering mortality in the next. There might be a few too many sad musical montages, but it never really goes over the top trying to sell Sandler's plight, maybe because his slightly self-destructive tendencies make him feel like a real person rather than just a sad sack trying to manipulate your emotions. So it's really disappointing when the movie hits the breaks on what it's been doing to spend like forty minutes wasting our time with a romance subplot. Leslie Mann and Eric Bana are both pretty good, likable actors, and they do a fine job in this movie. It's just that the part that they're in really doesn't belong with the rest. Everything else pretty much grinds to a halt as Sandler reconnects with Mann as the one that got away, as Apatow proudly presents his wife and daughters again, and then her husband played by Bana shows up to create a whole lot of awkward and difficult to watch tension. These scenes just keep going and going until the breaking point, while I was desperately waiting for them to get back to the real movie.

Eventually they do, once the scripts reaches its Time to Wrap Things Up phase with some predictable character development and resolution, although even being a bit rote as it was it was still better than what just came before. People reconcile and part ways as necessary, and everything ends just about the way it should. It's really too bad the movie went on that whole tangent, because apart from that I really liked it for the most part. As it stands, it's the least of Apatow's three films, though still worth seeing if you like the cast enough. I don't mind if he still wants to be sentimental last time, as long as he makes sure the script is a lot tighter than this.

Observe and Report

This was an unusual film. It had the slightly unfortunate position of coming out around the same time as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and they share a similar premise on the surface, but from what I know about that film, there's really almost nothing in common. The movie is surprisingly dark, much more of a black comedy than they really advertised. It's less about Seth Rogen hitting on Anna Faris and pursuing a flasher, and more a story of a bipolar man with serious delusions of grandeur trying to make himself into something. I don't want to overplay this side of it, because first things first it is a comedy, but I was fairly impressed with Rogen's performance, and there were some fairly disturbing (if still funny) moments when you see more into the crazy things he actually thinks about himself and his abilities.

Both the funniest and most tragic thing about his aspirations of being a real cop if it weren't for his medical issues is that he would actually be pretty good at it. A lot of the movie is fairly mundane, but there are a few scenes that get violent and are actually pretty effective as action and show an unexpected degree of skill with weaponry in Rogen's character. I don't want to spoil what actually happens, but they're some of the most memorable scenes from last year. Jody Hill seems as much concerned with shocking the audience as making them laugh, but not in a gross-out way, and it's an approach that mostly works for me.

There's some pretty funny stuff with Rogen and his fellow mall security guys, and his antagonistic relationship with Aziz Ansari is terrific. Not every scene really meets its potential, though. His confrontation with Patton Oswalt's asshole food court restaurant manager could have gone farther, and the sidekick character is definitely a situation where he was probably funnier on paper. It's not an outstanding movie, but it does a lot to stick out from the crowd, especially the climax, which I'd rather not spoil but is one of the best scenes I've seen in ages. It really has to be seen to be believed. I actually thought the ending was a bit too upbeat for the story, but a lot about the film is going to stick with me for a while.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express is yet another success for Apatow Productions. He and his crew rose to fame by bringing back the fun of sex comedies, but they've branched out, and Express' humor is all about pot, with Seth Rogen and James Franco's characters being high for most of the picture. Whereas they usually do straight comedy, this is sort of an action hybrid as the two friends get in trouble with crooked cops and drug lords and end up experiencing quite a few thrills. In some ways, it's more like a lower-intensity action film than a comedy, with most of the humor arising just from the way the characters talked instead of more discrete jokes. The pacing is a little strange, as several scenes, usually involving baked characters, go on for quite a bit longer than you'd expect, as they just keep riffing off each other. I wasn't bothered by it at all though, it fit the characters and gave it a unique feel that I enjoyed a lot.

The cast is full of the usual suspects, with funny, small parts played by Gary Cole, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader, and others. Like with Superbad, Rogen co-wrote with friend Evan Goldberg and does a solid job, but he gave the best part to Franco. I saw one reviewer say he was the funniest stoner character since Brad Pitt in True Romance, and it's not a thought I'd disagree with, although Pitt didn't have nearly as much time to be hilarious. Franco sometimes seems off-putting to me, but he really is great in this movie. He's never without something strange yet poignant to say, and has a great chemistry with Rogen. The movie is full of "bromance", possibly too-friendly, ambiguously gay camaraderie between two guys. There are tons of tropes from normal, heterosexual relationship development in other movies, and once in a while they get downright obvious with it to comedic effect. I haven't seen any of Green's other work as a director, but he does a fine job balancing the action and comedy. The climactic encounter is probably too over the top, although I strongly suspect it was intentional. I liked it quite a lot, and you should see it if you can see the humor in stoned idiots just acting like stoned idiots.

Superbad

The Judd Apatow Sex Comedy Train keeps rolling in good form with Superbad. Apatow didn't actually direct this one, he produced it. Frequent collaborator Seth Rogen wrote the script with his friend and is a featured cast member. The stars of the movie are Jonah Hill, another common fixture of Apatow's movies, and Michael Cera, most easily recognizable for his brutally awkward character of George Michael on Arrested Development. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is new to acting, and his character will probably outlive the rest of the movie. Everybody already knows about "McLovin". I didn't think he stole the movie as much as some other people did, but he was certainly likable. Greg Mottola is the director, and he does a good job of what he has to do with this kind of movie. Nothing fancy, just pointing the camera where it needs to be and keeping the movie focused. The whole cast and crew seems to work well together, and for some reason I just find Apatow and friends' movies better than the average comedy. It's a combination of good chemistry, sharp dialogue over pure gross-out humor (although there are plenty of dick and menstruation jokes), and some scenes that actually convey human emotion.

The two main characters hold the movie down well. Their banter and rapport is very entertaining, and they just seem like funny, likable guys. Hill can be kind of a jerk, but there are plenty of scenes that sympathize him. Cera's character is fairly close to George Michael. He's less completely sheltered and a bit more normal, but still the same kind of worried, reserved guy. Almost the entire movie takes place over the course of one eventful day, which gives it a different feel from a lot of other comedies. At times it can be a little straining, as there's pretty much something happening constantly, and it probably could have used a bit of dowtime. The pacing also seems a bit odd, with a large part of the movie taking place after school and before getting to the big party, wherein the main characters don't do a whole lot. There's a big subplot with McLovin driving around with a couple of seemingly dimwitted cops (one played by Rogen, the other by SNL star Bill Hader), attempting to get ahold of the booze for the party. The scenes are funny, but stretch the suspension of disbelief a lot and are maybe a bit distant from the real focus of the movie.

A few misgivings aside, Superbad is a very funny movie, with plenty of memorable lines and scenes. I'm not sure how much of the great dialogue was scripted and how much was improvised on set, but either way it's pretty smart. The goal of the two leads is to get to a party and hook-up with a certain girl, but the movie is really about the friendship between them. Over the course of the movie, they get angry at each other and have to deal with separation issues between them, and it's a movie that can really hit close to home for anyone who left or is going to leave close friends behind. It might not be as sentimental as some other stuff these guys have done, but it still rings very true. Superbad is one of the funniest movies this year, and definitely worth seeing.

Knocked Up

So our mall's opening a new Regal theater with stadium seating, and it's actually fairly nice. No more will the tops of the heads of strangers be an issue when I'm watching the latest blockbusters. Not that I get a chance to see many movies anyway. As a special promotion, they were showing slightly older movies for a dollar a ticket yesterday, and I wanted to see Knocked Up, so it worked out pretty nicely. I had to get up to pee a few times (Special $1 soda will do that) but otherwise it was a nice viewing experience.

The movie itself was good too. It's the same director as The 40 Year Old Virgin and a lot of the cast is the same as well. Even people who don't have real parts make some cameos, and you can tell they're a group that enjoys working together. The star, Seth Rogen, had his breakout role in Virgin as Carell's coworker Cal, and it's interesting to see him as the main character. He's funny, but in a much different way from famous comedy stars like Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. He's not playing a crazy character, he's playing a normal, likable guy. He has problems doing the right thing sometimes but you can tell his heart's mostly in the right place and he just needs some help sometimes. Katherine Heigl is also very good as the female lead. She holds her own and is believable as the girl struggling to come to grips with a situation she didn't plan for and a guy she isn't sure about. The supporting cast is also great, with Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd as the slightly older couple that serves as an example of marriage's troubles, a decent group of funny guys as Seth's friends, and Craig Robinson in a small but memorable role as the reluctant doorman at a night club. Why he isn't in more movies is a mystery to me.

The movie starts off a bit iffy, with some hit-and-miss pop culture humor, but it comes into its own as it develops the plot and the different relationships that form. Like Virgin, there's lots of drug use and constant raunchy dialogue, but it still comes away feeling charming because of the human element that can be seen through all of the vulgarity. It's an adult movie, not just because of the mature humor, but because it honestly deals with real issues like unplanned pregnancy. It's not without some errors. It's probably a bit too long. It's also a little predictable with the whole plot conflict as it gets closer to the end, of course they have to have a big fight and split up for a while before realizing it's all gonna be fine in the end. Honestly, I'm a little tired of the same old romantic comedy storyline, and just once I'd like to see a film eschew it. Why couldn't it just be about two people coming to grips with having a baby, why introduce the whole say-hurtful-things-under-stress-and-feel-sorry-later thing when nobody really likes it? It also gets a little heavy-handed with the message about not blaming others and being responsible for your own actions, but it never gets too bad and it all evens out to a hysterical movie with a good heart.