Apparently, Funny People wants to be all things to all people. In a trend hinted at in 40-Year-Old Virgin and attempted in Knocked Up, Judd Apatow seems to want Funny People to be a raunchy comedy and a touching romantic drama about second chances. We have no idea if he can pull that off (Knocked Up doesn't give us much hope), but you have to give him credit for trying, especially since he's assembled one of the pound-for-pound funniest casts we've seen in a while. Of course, for every funny movie one of these stars has been in, there's been a dud, so there are no guarantees. We ran down the cast's capacity for funny in our Funny People Risk Assessor gallery, so check it out before you decide whether to roll the dice on your comedy.

Tags: Adam Sandler, Eric Bana, Funny People, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen

You've got to hand it to Seth Rogen: the guy wanted to make a superhero movie, so he found a hero nobody was doing anything with, one that he could conceivably play, and he wrote a script (with collaborator Evan Goldberg) that successfully hybridized the Green Hornet's atypical origin story with a slacker buddy comedy. When his director and co-star backed out, he found another director and another co-star, and the end result, the 3-D, Michel Gondry-directed, visually stunning Green Hornet, is unlike any superhero movie I've seen. It manages to take Rogen's idiotic, confrontational comedy shtick and make it a seamless part of the story of a hero's rise. Because what kind of idiot puts on a mask and goes out looking for a fight?

Tags: Christoph Waltz, Green Hornet, Michel Gondry, review, Seth Rogen

Meta is the new black. How else do you explain the runaway success of 30 Rock, which stars Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan as the writer and star of a variety show? Or Jean-Claude Van Damme playing a down-and-out version of himself in JCVD? Or Paul Giamatti playing a jaded actor named Paul Giamatti in the movie Cold Souls? You can't, can you? Well, director Judd Apatow has harnessed the power of meta for his own ends in Funny People, and thanks to an amazing supporting cast and liberal use of the word "cock," he seems to have opened some sort of bizarre rift in space and time and made Adam Sandler funny again.

Tags: Adam Sandler, Aziz Ansari, Funny People, Jonah Hill, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann, review, Seth Rogen

Since its inception in 1990, the MPAA has slapped the NC-17 on several undeserving movies. It has also withheld said application on more deserving films, either due to public fear or corporate pressure. Both cases yield ridiculous results. For example, Martin Lawrence's comedy concert film, You So Crazy, is rated NC-17, yet Mel Gibson's The Passion is rated R. One film spends 90 minutes talking about crap, Prince and getting a piece, the other spends over two hours beating the crap out of the Prince of Peace. Actions speak louder than words, and should be rated as such. If I go on a date, and we spend the evening talking, that's R (for profanity and sex-related begging). If I'm invited upstairs "for coffee" at the end of the date, that's NC-17 (for graphic sexu--oh, who am I kidding--for brief sexuality and extreme charity). Kevin Smith probably used a similar example when the MPAA rated his actionless film Clerks NC-17. He had more 'splainin' to do than Lucy Ricardo, however, when they slapped the dreaded rating on his latest, Zach and Mimi Make A Porno.

Tags: A Dirty Shame, Clerks, Do the Right Thing, Elizabeth Banks, John Waters, Kevin Smith, Martin Lawrence, MPAA, NC-17, Seth Rogen, The Passion of the Christ, Zach and Mimi Make a Porno

Yes, Observe & Report is the second comedy about a mall security guard to come out this year (a fact Seth Rogen savagely mocked in his SNL monologue). However, if Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the Die Hard of mall security guard comedies (plotwise, at least), then Observe & Report is the Taxi Driver, and while I love me some Die Hard, O&R is infinitely more disturbing, and satisfying, and disturbingly satisfying. Depending on where your personal line is, this movie may not cross it, exactly, but it certainly walks up to the line and tasers you from a safe distance.

Tags: Observe & Report, Observe and Report, review, Seth Rogen

Mall cop movies: there's one for everybody these days for some reason. There were no mall cop movies in the history of movies before last year (there were security guard movies, but that's not the same. Security guards work at banks so they can rob them. Mall cops work at malls so they can not work all day and get paid to eat hot dogs on sticks) and now all of a sudden there are going to be 50 Paul Blarts, and Observe and Report is opening Friday. But a trend is a trend, and while I admire Seth Rogen for recognizing one and hopping right onto that caboose, he's still playing the exact same character he always plays. Like most people on the internet, I think Observe and Report will probably be pretty good, actually (I love a good mob mentality!), but still -- let's go over this guy's resume. Read closely, and you may notice a pattern: It's like Ferrell-level same guy every timeness. It's like Michael Cera-level same guy every timeness. It's like Tommy Chong-level same guy every timeness. Cal-bong, take me away!

Tags: Anna Faris, Observe and Report, Seth Rogen

So we all heard about the spate of Iron Man and Avengers-related films that Marvel is putting into development in the wake of Iron Man's success. But it seems like Shellhead's big box office has done more than that. As a long-time Iron Man fan, and a pretty big comic book reader, I had no idea that Iron Man was considered second-tier. But apparently, he was a huge gamble compared to known superheroes like Spider-Man, Hulk, Batman, Superman and, uh, Ghost Rider. (Okay, I guess they're all pretty big players, but Blade was totally second-tier, and didn't he do pretty well, considering he got two sequels? But I digress.) Anyway, because a no-name superhero like Iron Man did well, B-list heroes are getting booked for big-screen endeavors in a big way.

Tags: Billy Batson, Captain Marvel, comic book, Green Arrow, Green Hornet, movie, Seth Rogen, Shazam, Superheroes, Supermax

Star Wars fanboys. They're everywhere -- especially in Hollywood. So when it was announced that someone was making a movie called Fanboys, chronicling five Midwestern geeks' cross-country trip to steal a copy of Star Wars: Episode I for their friend with terminal cancer, there were plenty of famous fanboys ready and willing to be involved. Director Kyle Newman lined up a host of celebu-nerds to make cameos in the film, ranging from geek icons to actual Star Wars film legends. If the killer leads (Sam "Superman Returns" Huntington! Dan "Balls of Fury" Fogler! Jay "Tropic Thunder" Baruchel!) weren't enough to convince you to see it, we thought we'd run down the celebrity eye candy that will teach you the true meaning of the Force. (Note: While we try to avoid giving out any spoiler-ish plot information, we are totally killing any surprise that you may get from these actors showing up. Be warned!)

Tags: Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, Fanboys, Kevin Smith, Kristen Bell, Lando Calrissian, Princess Leia, Seth Rogen, SNL, Star Wars, The Office, William Shatner