Ricky Gervais finds an unlikely foe in Judd Apatow

The Golden Globes are eons away now, yet somehow people are still talking about Ricky Gervais’ controversial performance as host where he made fun of celebrities…like every other host does. He was just better at it.

There’s been much back and forth about whether he went to far, but most of the actors targeted have come out and said that Gervais was just being a card, and it wasn’t anything to get upset over.

But now there’s a new critic of the performance that really caught me off guard. Judd Apatow recently hosted the Producer’s Guild Awards this weekend and had a lot of unkind things to say himself about Gervais and his jokes.

“What did you think of Ricky Gervais?” he asked the black-tie industry crowd Saturday night. “I didn’t like him. I thought he was mean.”

“He had that joke about the guy on Lost,” said Apatow. “He said he ate everybody else. Let’s be honest — Ricky Gervais just lost weight. Even now he’s four pounds away from not being allowed to do a joke like that. Did he lose weight just to make fat jokes? You think that’s how mean he is?”

“(Gervais) says the characters (in The Tourist) were two-dimensional,” said Apatow. “Then he says he hasn’t seenThe Tourist. So as a comedian, that’s not fair, is it? To make jokes about a movie you haven’t seen. “I can’t do a joke about (Gervais’s movie) The Invention of Lying because I haven’t seen it. You haven’t seen it. None of us have seen it. So the joke would not work.”

These are all jokes I guess, despite the fact they’re not terribly funny, but then things get a bit weirder:

“(Gervais) made a joke about Tim Allen who was standing next to Tom Hanks,” said Apatow. “Who looks good standing next to Tom Hanks? We all look like a piece of shit standing next toTom Hanks. Warren Buffet would look like a piece of shit next to Tom Hanks.”

“Tim Allen did 200 episodes of Home Improvement. He was in three of the highest grossing movies of all time. And his latest just crossed the one billion mark. Whereas The Invention Of Lying made $18 million dollars worldwide…Leave Tim Allen alone.”

What the? That’s not even a joke, that’s just being a Tim Allen fanboy, who has himself said he didn’t care about Gervais’ jab. I get that Gervais is topical right now, but Apatow sounds genuinely upset with him. 

Who would have thought Judd Apatow, king of the modern era of raunchy comedy would have a problem with Gervais being “mean”? What do you guys make of this?