I Funny is a 2012 novel by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein, intended as a spin-off of sorts to the Middle School series. It stars Jamie Grimm, a young budding comedian from Long Beach, New York, confined to a wheelchair. Stuck in a humorless foster family and a school full of bullies, Jamie uses stand-up comedy to cope with his troubles and keep his enemies too doubled-over to punch. When he hears of a "Planet's Funniest Kid Comic" contest, he ditches his home and family to leave for Manhattan and face off against the funniest kids in the state.
The book received five sequels: I Even Funnier, I Totally Funniest, I Funny TV, I Funny: School of Laughs, and The Nerdiest, Wimpiest, Dorkiest I Funny Ever.
Not to be confused with the controversial social media app.
I Funny contains examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: Even though Jamie regrets making fun of his friends and Uncle Frankie in the second round, they forgive him since his comedy allows them to laugh at themselves. As Uncle Frankie tells him, being able to laugh at himself keeps him young.
- Barbaric Bully: Stevie Kosgrov, who later becomes Jamie's stepbrother. He's never above flipping over Jamie's wheelchair.
- Brutal Honesty: Cool Girl always asks Jamie brutally honest questions about life with a wheelchair, such as how he pees. It's one of the reasons he likes her so much: she never sugarcoats for him because of the chair.
- Cool Uncle: Jamie's Uncle Frankie, who runs the seaside diner where Jamie mans the cash register. He's the only family member close to Jamie, and encourages him to apply for the comedy contest.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The car accident that made Jamie a paraplegic killed his whole family.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: What Jamie hates most is when people treat him nicer than others because of his wheelchair disability. At the first round, one of the judges tells Jamie he's already a winner for trying, which gives him the anger-fueled energy he needs to ace his routine.
- Friend to All Children: Jamie adores kids and any time he encounters a group of them, he takes time to acknowledge and listen to them
- Gang of Bullies: Stevie and his two detention friends, nicknamed Zits and Useless.
- Groupie Brigade: In the beginning of the third book in the series, "I Totally Funniest", Jamie has become so famous in his school for winning multiple comedy competitions that he is now popular with girls, as he is surrounded by screaming fangirls who all want his autograph, to the dismay of his friends. One of Jamie's rivals, Ben the Italian Scallion, has hordes of screaming female groupies as well.
- Happily Adopted: Ultimately, Uncle Frankie takes custody of Jamie, who is absolutely ecstatic.
- In-Series Nickname: Jamie always calls Suzie Orolvsky "Cool Girl."
- Karma Houdini: Stevie manages to get away with an unfortunate amount of bullying towards Jamie, including starting rumors that he's faking his handicap and yanking Jamie out of his chair and tossing him off the pier onto the beach before running off with the chair (which only didn't result in any fall out other than a scare because Uncle Frankie happened to walk home that way, allowing Jamie to call for help).
- Last-Name Basis: Jamie's two best friends, Gaynor and Pierce, never go by their first names (Joey and Jimmy respectively.)
- Mr. Fanservice: Ben Baccaro in I Totally Funniest is an example of this. Whenever he tells a joke, he ripples his muscles, and he has plenty of screaming fangirls in his audience.
- Mr. Imagination: Jamie likes to imagine the pedestrians on his way to school are zombies and his principal is Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
- Musical Chores: Uncle Frankie always plays doo-wop on the jukebox and sings along (usually badly) while working in his restaurant.
- Performance Anxiety: Jamie gets this often since he's never performed before: first when giving an oral presentation in English class, and then much worse at both rounds of the contest.
- Perpetual Frowner: Jamie's foster family, who he affectionately nicknames The Smileys.
- Political Overcorrectness: One of Jamie's bits is all about how politically correct his school is—for example, nobody's fat anymore, they're all "horizontally expanded." And nobody there farts, they merely "expel alternative fuels."
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Impulsive goofball Gaynor, and put-together intellectual Pierce.
- Russian Bear: Discussed when Jamie says that a Russian customer laughs "like a happy bear".
- Secret Message Wink: Jamie is choking with fear at the stand-up comedy tournament semifinals, but he catches Cool Girl's eye in the audience and she shoots him a secret wink to reassure him, which helps him remember his set. Later when Jamie performs to the kids in his old hospital, he riffs on a joke his foster mom told him and gives her a quick wink to thank her for the material.
- Shout-Out:
- Jamie always uses Yakov Smirnoff lines on Mr. Burdzecki, a regular Russian customer. For all his other customers, he quotes many different comedians, ranging from George Carlin to Rodney Dangerfield to Steven Wright.
- Jamie and Gilda bond over quoting The Marx Brothers.
- Jamie compares using his wheelchair over sand to Han Solo, Leia, and Luke stuck in the endless Tatooine desert in Return of the Jedi.
- After losing the school election, Jamie admits he voted for a write-in candidate, namely Bart Simpson—who, according to Jamie, would be a great student council president.
- Squee: When Jamie calls Gilda and tells her he has been accepted into the Las Vegas Wildcard competition, her reaction is a Squee that's so loud that Jamie tells the reader they could hear it all the way from their house.
- Sweet and Sour Grapes: Jamie's sitcom takes up so much of his time that he completely misses the filming of the piece Gilda desperately needed to qualify for a contest where the prize was a scholarship to her dream school, leaving the short film in utter shambles; however, this leaves her to help direct said sitcom after the original assistant director is booted for being a bigot, which nets her a full ride scholarship with glowing recommendations from the director.
- Title Drop: The book's title comes from a compliment Mr. Burdzecki gives Jamie in very broken English. Jamie repeats the compliment to himself whenever he feels insecure.
- Toilet Humor: Part of Jamie's set; he calls it "heading to Grossville."
- Tough Room: Shecky from Schenectady, the kid comic who goes before Jamie in the second round, could not elicit more than a few groans from his Hurricane of Puns routine.
- Visual Pun: One illustration shows Jamie leaving the house "at the crack of dawn," and sure enough there is a crack drawn in the sky.
- Welcome to the Big City: When Jamie first arrives in Manhattan, he gets mugged and a rat pees on his shoes. However, he's ecstatic because it means that here, he's treated like everyone else.
