Roberto Bolaño was known to say that it was the writer’s duty to plunge headfirst into the void, into the darkness. I like to think that Funny People is the film where Judd Apatow walked to the edge of the void, looked down, and decided that it was enough. The director said he wanted to make a movie about death, but I wouldn’t have known it from watching Funny People. The film is made up of moments where Apatow plays chicken with the serious — and he’s the one to veer first. It follows much like the scene when the self-absorbed pseudo-star played by Jason Schwartzman shares the story of his grandfather’s death, only to be greeted with jokes by his friends.

But laughter, after all, is the best medicine. Who can fault the man behind Knocked Up for putting some funny in the casket? And if Funny People can’t be a movie about death, maybe it can be a movie about stand-up comics. Oh, that would be a good one. Comedians have the kinds of easily discoverable psychological traumas they like to talk about with James Lipton. They also hate themselves, which is unique. They talk about cocks a lot.

The most interesting moments in the movie have to do with the nature of comedy itself — in this sense, the film is not all that different from last year’s The Wrestler, which made its central theme the sacrificial quality of the entertainer. Funny People brushes the surface of that. Then it turns its head to something else.

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Don’t be fooled, though. Lots of distractions make for a long movie. Seth Rogan’s character needs a girlfriend. No one needs anymore proof that he is consistently saccharine. I heard Billy Collins say that when he was writing a poem he sometimes liked to throw a dog in there, like someone would put some flowers in the corner. I suppose people pull their content from different places. Judd Apatow seems to be thinking this way. The content that could have been drained from the relationship between Rogan and Sandler isn’t enough. No, better to have a woman. It gives them more opportunities to talk about their balls.

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Superbad, which is in some form or another associated with Apatow, had an amazing level of cock talk. It was Glenn Gould level genius. There was something nearly Sirkian in that film about the barrage of profanity — something that made you step back and reconsider what was being presented to you. It made you realize that that movie was one of the most heartbreaking homosexual love stories in recent memory (no, I’m not kidding). In Funny People, though, it’s not that the characters are talking about their small to average size members to distract themselves. The film is doing it to distract you. And it leads you to realize that Funny People can’t seem to talk about what it wants to talk about.

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Also, there is a love story. Why not, I guess. Apatow is uninterested in earning the notes of the love story — he just seems to hit them with a lot of tears and hope the audience will too. They won’t.

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Someone used to say about Truffaut that sometimes he had an idea and made a movie, and then sometimes he didn’t have an idea but he made a movie anyway. At the very least, Apatow has a few ideas. But Funny People seems incapable or uninterested in sorting them out. It has some things to say. I think I can make out the shadows of his points — the nature of stand-up comedy is the most compelling — but that’s not enough.

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The film isn’t honest about its accomplishments. It’s not as courageous as it thinks it is. Remember Groundhog Day? That’s a bold film, and it’s about something. Watching Funny People, I got the feeling there were a lot of options — Sandler could have just played someone named Adam Sandler, the film could have started towards the end of his disease, Sandler and his lost love could have never confessed their feelings to one another — it could have been sadder, funnier, smarter. It didn’t feel like Judd Apatow ever had any of those thoughts.