Apatow offers up comedy - with a heart

I love all kinds of comedy. The romantic (“Annie Hall”), the classic (“City Lights”), the dark (“Dr. Strangelove”), the light (“Finding Nemo”), the offbeat (“Young Frankenstein”), the silly (“Airplane!”) and the bizarre (“There’s Something About Mary”).

In the last few years, one of the big names in Hollywood comedy has been Judd Apatow. The guy who wrote for everything from the “Ben Stiller Show” to “The Larry Sanders Show,” is the same writer and/or producer who works with such now-familiar names as Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill and Jason Segal.

Think about “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” Or, as producer only, “Superbad” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”

Guys who are so successful at comedy typically have a hard time transitioning to anything even slightly more serious. Which is why I was hesitant about seeing “Funny People.”

First of all, “Funny People” stars Adam Sandler, who is always a questionable asset to a project. Second, it involves Sandler – portraying a character somewhat similar to himself – dealing with cancer.

Adam Sandler and cancer. Uh-oh.

I needn’t have worried. The Sandler who shows up here is the same one who was so good in P.T. Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love.” And Sandler’s costar just happens to be Rogen. Oh, and Hill and Jason Schwartzman show up just for fun.

Rogen stars as Ira, a nebbish guy who works at an L.A. deli, sleeps on a couch in his more successful friends’ (Schwartzman, Hill) apartment and does free stand-up comedy because that’s what he really wants to do. But as anyone just learning his trade, he’s not that polished.

Then one night he follows the famous movie comic George (Sandler), whose act has turned dark because, one, he’s living a lonely kind of life and, two, he’s just been diagnosed with a particularly virulent kind of cancer. Ira scores, working off of George’s situation, and he earns George’s attention.

And a job offer. George wants him to be his assistant. The resulting buddy film involves George’s struggle, Ira’s growth and the obstacles each faces in becoming a better version of himself. George must resolve his relationship with the woman he once nearly married (played by Leslie Mann, Apatow’s real-life wife), and Ira must find his own voice – and, in the process, a career.

Here’s why I really like “Funny People.” Yes, it has all the fart and oral-sex and homophobic jokes that make up so much of today’s stand-up comedy. But it never forgets to imbue the story’s characters with heart.

So the film is funny and it is touching and, in working out its story line, it avoids any real easy fixes. It ends just as life so often plays out – by leaving us in a place where we can make up our own minds about what happens next.

That may not make “Funny People” a comic masterpiece. But it sure makes it a satisfying view, and it makes me hopeful about where Apatow might go next.