I’d like to describe the ways in which Rex Reed‘s review of Funny People is a vile deviation from appropriate respect and fair-mindedness, but it is one of those rare times when I am at a loss for words. He calls director-writer Judd Apatow “the most tasteless no-talent and truthfully alleged ‘director’ since John Waters and the Farrelly brothers,” derides Knocked Up as “abominable” and calls Funny People “a 146-minute mental lapse that should have been dipped in hydrochloric acid in the editing lab.” Nobody’s “right’ or “wrong” in these matters but at the very least Reed’s rash and excitable judgments throw the film’s virtues (the self-regarding candor and emotional intimacy) out with the bathwater.
