Stephanie Zacharek at Salon has written a piece about Judd Apatow, who has become the godfather of 21st century comedy. An excerpt:
Apatow has had a hand in the leisure suit-and-sideburn preposterousness of “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” the oblique stoner humor of “Pineapple Express,” the sharp-cornered romantic angst of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and the exhausting semicircular gags of “Drillbit Taylor.” He was one of the writers of the much-maligned (for my money, unjustly so) “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” and produced a seemingly slight teen comedy, “Superbad,” that has become a cult favorite. Not all of these movies have been hits. But the sheer number of producing and/or writing credits Apatow has amassed in the past five years alone (did I mention “Year One”? Or “Step Brothers”? Or “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”?) suggests that Apatow — a clever, perceptive writer who cut his teeth producing and writing for “The Larry Sanders Show” and “The Ben Stiller Show,” and went on to executive-produce the short-lived but well-loved series “Freaks and Geeks” — has become a comedy tastemaker for his era, a guru who knows what will resonate with a young, modern audience.
But comedy, which by its nature is unruly and untamable, doesn’t lend itself to being wrangled into submission by any one person, for any length of time. Apatow has cornered the market on movie comedy not just by being in the right place at the right time, but by being pretty much everywhere at once. And with “Funny People” — not strictly a comedy, although it is, in places, very funny — Apatow further increases his risk of giving us more Apatow than, perhaps, we really want.