Open Wide: Spoon-Fed Cinema.

IN ''Funny People,'' the new movie starring Adam Sandler, the audience is treated to glimpses of a movie starring Mr. Sandler's character, a stand-up comedian turned movie star named George Simmons. The film within a film, which looks like a variation on the venerable ''Look Who's Talking'' theme, features George's head digitally superimposed on the body of an infant, an effect that is both grotesque and funny, and also pregnant with cultural significance. It's obvious that the image of a baby with Adam Sandler's face self-mockingly encapsulates much of Mr. Sandler's career, pointing up his curious and durable overgrown-child appeal. And it is also clear that the film's writer and director, Judd Apatow, is lampooning some aspects of his own work, which has shamelessly exploited (though it has also earnestly explored) the juvenile, even infantile impulses that seem to define the soul of the modern male American. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]