Zacharek: ""The Hangover," a retooling of the classic frat-boy-shenanigans comedy, is Apatow-like in that it's extremely sensitive to its nerdier characters. But in its freewheeling (and very funny) screwball crudeness, it diverges significantly from the Apatow model."

I am not sure I agree with this. It's maybe true if you define Apatow by the three movies he wrote and directed, which are primarily character-driven. But not if you define him by the stuff he's produced (much of which he probably guided during the development/writing process).

The example that comes to mind for me is "The Pineapple Express." What was that if not pure screwball crudeness? (some good, some "eh") Same with "Step Brothers" -- Apatow produced that too. So whatever "the Apatow model" might be, I don't think "The Hangover" is that far off. ("The Hangover" is great in that it is like several other movies -- from "Go" to "Bachelor Party" to "Memento," but stands alone as well.)

Zacharek: "But maybe Apatow should heed the cautionary tale of 1980s wunderkind John Hughes, who hit it big as a writer-director with "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" and called it quits as a director after the 1991 debacle "Curly Sue.""

So you're saying that with just three auteur-style films to his credit, Apatow should retire? That is a pretty extreme conclusion. I get what you're saying about Apatow's "moment" getting a bit ripe, but it seems a stretch to suggest he's washed up in the same way John Hughes apparently was.

Personally I enjoy dissecting and analyzing people's careers and creativity, but only to a point. Once it gets into the realm of discussing what a person's future career path ought to be, I fear we've moved beyond artistic evaluation and into a kinda creepy area for a reviewer to go.

However, the other 99% of the review was very good.

The thing that I took away from "Funny People" is that its characters all have screwed-up families, and instead have formed their own (often dysfunctional) "tribes" to replace them. I thought the friends of Seth Rogen were in many ways like his family (we never see or hear much about his parents, though they're divorced).

Then you see all the older comics who were friends with Adam Sandler's character. They meet for lunch or for drinks at a bar, and they all look rather rumpled and worn down by the same life of rootlessness that Sandler's character has. But in groups together they appear to feed off of each other's energy and neurosis.

When you finally see a real family, in the third act, it looks completely alien to everything else seen in the movie. I think Apatow does the weakest job at this portrayal, and I am not sure whether that's because he uses his whole family to play the people, or because I as a viewer became keenly aware that "Hey! That's Apatow's whole real-life family! What is going on here?!"

There was too much running around at the end for my tastes -- Seth Rogen running after Leslie Mann's character, Eric Bana running to and from the airport, etc. It was already a little jarring to have the main characters leave Los Angeles, so the final act was just....well, unexpected (which isn't bad in itself).

The saving grace was that Seth Rogen had some amount of reality-check to what was happening: "She's just a crazy actress!" and "I'm watching a slow-moving train wreck." That doesn't rescue the movie from the fact that Sandler's character spirals down a weird self-indulgent fantasy path. I know Apatow needed his characters to go somewhere and resolve the issues they'd established, so I understand what he was getting at here. But I think this part of the movie could have been a little tighter. Making the two girls such charming, problem-free specimens of childhood (in a Better Homes & Garden dream domicile) perhaps pushed things too far.

The end resolution of the two characters seems to confirm the power of their "tribal" connection and the whole idea that these types of people need to lean on each other to make up for the fact that some of them are fundamentally incapable of functioning in the mold of a traditional family life.

One word to sum you up:

Losers.

LondonLad: "That is an incorrect statement and every time an Obama supporter makes it he/she must be called on it. The doctor said nothing at all about the "birth certificate" on the Obama website or any other birth certificate."

THE ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE:

STATEMENT BY DR. CHIYOME FUKINO

“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record.

“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.

“No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai‘i.”

Did everybody see that? Let's look again...

LondonLad: "The doctor said nothing at all about the "birth certificate" on the Obama website or any other birth certificate.""

Dr. Chiyome Fukino: "I ... have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

Gee, LondonLad, where'd you get your facts, the toilet of a permanently grounded British Airways plane?

See also: The USA Today article, "Hawaii: Obama birth certificate is real"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-27-obama-hawaii_N.htm