The world would be a different place today if it weren’t for Star Wars. People wouldn’t walk around all day making Chewbacca noises for no apparent reason, the U.S. government wouldn’t secretly be in the process of making lightsabers and America’s first Death Star a reality and most people would still be afraid to make out with their sister. It would also be impossible for people to use the force and take people’s clothes off with their minds.

Truth. Keep it real, and may the Force be with you.

Funny People problematically strives to be equally good at drama and comedy, in a film confronting death and Hollywood self-obsession. Unfortunately, the humor usually falls flat and the drama is painfully rendered. It is simply not okay to devote two-and-a-half hours to character development when none of the characters develop, and all of the characters are completely unlikeable. For example, Adam Sandler’s George Simmons, a comedian who survives a close call with leukemia, stays the same incorrigible (and incidentally, unfunny) asshole that he was from the beginning. With little to no self-awareness and a lot of baseless self-involvement, he maintains the same modes of expressing these traits throughout the film: mocking Seth Rogen’s character, mocking others to the point that it’s painful to watch, and randomly rekindling relationships that the viewer can’t even believe were kindled in the first place.

One of these is with his ex-fiancée, a spineless ex-actress rendered by Leslie Mann, who starts out the film ignoring Simmons, twenty minutes later sobbing and confessing that he was “the one,” and spending most of the film being obsessed with him for no comprehensible reason. (Note to Judd Apatow: this does not count as character development, it counts as misogyny at best.) Some parts of their re-courtship would be cute if you weren’t set up to hate both of the oblivious characters, and if the characters didn’t predictably end up where they started (deluded, separated and feeling betrayed – causing the audience to feel wholly betrayed as well). Meanwhile, Seth Rogen’s brand of “development” is a passive alternation between being sycophantic (as Simmons’ assistant) and whining about Simmons’ antics. The only time that his character hits the nail on the head is when he finally says something about how fucked up it is that Simmons took his second chance at life and chose to stay the same asshole. By that time, however, it’s over two hours into the film and he’s saying what the audience already knew, only out loud and with a garish attempt to look emotionally distressed. He doesn’t punctuate the film with nearly enough humor to make up for the damage he’s done as a terrible dramatic actor, and even the lines that are on point aren’t enough to redeem him.