Judd Apatow

The movies that come out of the Judd Apatow comedy factory are the real revenge of the nerds. In them the human male at his most woebegone manages to score with women who in the real world wouldn't touch him with a pair of tweezers. The heroes are pudges, mouthbreathers, loners, stoners - the average guy on a less-than-average day. It's a hell of a fantasy, and audiences of both genders seem to love it. (So why hasn't anyone made a movie about a schlumpy woman with dandruff attracting a himbo?

New releases ★★½ The Five-Year Engagement A pleasant but predictable and overlong romantic comedy about a couple (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt) whose relationship suffers when he follows her from San Francisco to Michigan for her career. One of the softer offerings from the Judd Apatow production factory, it gets its laughs while having virtually no dramatic tension. With Alison Brie. (124 min., R) (Ty Burr) ★★★ The Pirates! Band of Misfits The animators at Aardman ("Wallace & Gromit")

The producer of "Bridesmaids" says he needs a good idea first before considering a sequel. That doesn't mean Judd Apatow is against the idea. The film with Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy was a comedy hit last summer is up for a Golden Globe award on Sunday. Apatow said Friday that the danger of agreeing to a sequel without being committed to a good idea "usually leads to 'Jaws 3-D. "' He says everyone involved in the project agrees that moving forward just to get a raise is not a good reason to do a movie.

The problem that plagues so many Judd Apatow productions — the one that keeps good comedies from being great ones — unfortunately exists in "The Five-Year Engagement," too. It's a matter of knowing when to say when, of knowing which bits should be trimmed and which should have been cut altogether. "The Five-Year Engagement" is so scattered and overlong, it really feels like it lasts five years, and even the inherent likability of stars Jason Segel and Emily Blunt can't overcome the film's pervasive sense of strain.

FUNNY PEOPLE ★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Movies Under $3) Bad-boy comedy maestro Judd Apatow has decided he has something important to say: Being funny is no fun. Adam Sandler is excellent as a nasty Hollywood star with a fatal disease, but at 2 1/2 hours, "People" is two movies, neither very good. (R; runs through April 2) TY BURR PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE ★★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Movies Under $3) Gone are the epic San Fernando Valley metaphysics of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" - Paul Thomas Anderson has smaller fish to fry. An off-kilter, deeply touching comedy of eros, the movie stars Adam...

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL ★★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: April Foolishness) The latest product from the Judd Apatow factory, and like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" it delivers belly laughs that explode from the meeting of wit and shock. Screenwriter Jason Segel stars as a schlump who loses his TV star girlfriend (Kristen Bell) to a preening British rocker (a very funny Russell Brand). Ordinary in a way other Apatow comedies aren't, it's still rudely funny. (R; runs through April 30)

The Prime Time Emmy Nominations 8:30 a.m. They will be announced this morning, so scan your websites and your dial, including E! and the network morning shows, for the news. I think Jon Hamm, Edie Falco, Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, "Modern Family," "The Good Wife," and "Mad Men" can relax. Who else would I like to see on the list? Here are just a few of the deserving but far from guaranteed actors and shows: Timothy Olyphant (pictured) and "Justified," Wendell Pierce and "Treme," Peter Dinklage and "Game of Thrones," "Parks and Recreation," Ray Romano and "Men of a Certain Age," Irrfan Khan from "In Treatment," and...

New releases ★★½ The Five-Year Engagement A pleasant but predictable and overlong romantic comedy about a couple (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt) whose relationship suffers when he follows her from San Francisco to Michigan for her career. One of the softer offerings from the Judd Apatow production factory, it gets its laughs while having virtually no dramatic tension. With Alison Brie. (124 min., R) (Ty Burr) ★★★ The Pirates! Band of Misfits The animators at Aardman ("Wallace & Gromit")

If a talk with Robert De Niro and Judd Apatow can be considered a meeting of drama and comedy, humor easily won out when the two took the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival. De Niro, a co-founder of Tribeca, and Apatow, the director of "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," convened Thursday for a conversation built around the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios. Both have made numerous films for the Comcast-owned studio founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle. But as stark as the differences between De Niro and Apatow, the yuck-filled conversation, if anything, proved the blurring of...

Before becoming a filmmaker in his own right - he just finished serving as an executive producer on "Moonrise Kingdom," due out next year - Sam Hoffman worked with directors Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and Wes Anderson, as well as the stars attracted by such luminaries. But when he stepped behind the camera three years ago, it was for a project that focused on far more ordinary people: his father and his father's buddies. "My father gathered together 20 of his friends in New Jersey and I shot video of them telling jokes," Hoffman said.

If a talk with Robert De Niro and Judd Apatow can be considered a meeting of drama and comedy, humor easily won out when the two took the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival. De Niro, a co-founder of Tribeca, and Apatow, the director of "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," convened Thursday for a conversation built around the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios. Both have made numerous films for the Comcast-owned studio founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle. But as stark as the differences between De Niro and Apatow, the yuck-filled conversation, if anything, proved the blurring of...

PASADENA, Calif. — After scoring critical acclaim with her 2010 indie film, "Tiny Furniture," Lena Dunham has turned her attention to the small screen and her new HBO series, "Girls," which premieres Sunday at 10:30 p.m. Documenting the trials and tribulations of four 20-something women in New York, Dunham, 25, created and writes, directs, and stars in "Girls" as the confused but comical Hannah Horvath. Dunham and Judd Apatow, a "Girls" executive producer, chatted with reporters recently at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL ★★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: April Foolishness) The latest product from the Judd Apatow factory, and like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" it delivers belly laughs that explode from the meeting of wit and shock. Screenwriter Jason Segel stars as a schlump who loses his TV star girlfriend (Kristen Bell) to a preening British rocker (a very funny Russell Brand). Ordinary in a way other Apatow comedies aren't, it's still rudely funny. (R; runs through April 30)

Lena Dunham is deconstructing femininity right across the table. Having spiffed up for some behind-the-scenes featurettes for her upcoming HBO series, "Girls," Dunham has relaxed into her seat at a Tribeca restaurant not far from where she grew up. Shortly after shedding her overcoat, she pulls off her fake eyelashes, too, apologizing for her manners and lamenting the forthright revelation of a women's "secret" to a member of the opposite sex....

FUNNY PEOPLE ★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Movies Under $3) Bad-boy comedy maestro Judd Apatow has decided he has something important to say: Being funny is no fun. Adam Sandler is excellent as a nasty Hollywood star with a fatal disease, but at 2 1/2 hours, "People" is two movies, neither very good. (R; runs through April 2) TY BURR PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE ★★★ (Comcast Movie Collections: Movies Under $3) Gone are the epic San Fernando Valley metaphysics of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" - Paul Thomas Anderson has smaller fish to fry. An off-kilter, deeply touching...

TORONTO - The time-space wormhole opens, and out steps Whit Stillman. The filmmaker has changed alarmingly little since his last film, 1998's "The Last Days of Disco. " The hair is a donnish gray now, but it still flops across his brow with preppie ease. He's dressed soberly, classily, but nervousness peeks out between the buttonholes. It has been 13 years since Stillman's very precise gifts have been visited upon movie theaters: characters who are young, ardent, and WASPy; dialogue that glitters and turns upon itself; a fascination with social gestures and dilemmas that...

The producer of "Bridesmaids" says he needs a good idea first before considering a sequel. That doesn't mean Judd Apatow is against the idea. The film with Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy was a comedy hit last summer is up for a Golden Globe award on Sunday. Apatow said Friday that the danger of agreeing to a sequel without being committed to a good idea "usually leads to 'Jaws 3-D. "' He says everyone involved in the project agrees that moving forward just to get a raise is not a good reason to do a movie.

Jonah Hill, world's worst babysitter. Must have sounded like such movie magic that the makers of "The Sitter" grabbed the first three brats they found on the street, shoved them in a minivan with Hill and started filming. As broad, dumb comedy goes, it's not a bad idea to cast Hill as a chubby slacker roped into a hellish night tending to a high-maintenance brood. Yet other than Hill's admirable work ethic trying to squeeze laughs out of this dismally underdeveloped scenario, "The Sitter" has nothing going for it. Not even its fleeting length.