Too much is never enough.

There's no point in trying to retell something funny from a movie; you lose something in the translation. But in a Judd Apatow film, you can be sure that at least once, and probably several times, a character is going to do something stupid. Or crass. Or gross. And Apatow is going to go back to it, again and again and again.

Whatever the scene — John C. Reilly's casual indifference to a naked man standing next to him in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" or Jonah Hill recalling graphic drawings he made as a kid in "Superbad" — it'll be funny the first time you see it. Yet he'll go back to it, again and again and again until, by the third or fourth or fifth time you're rolling on the floor. At that point you're helpless.

At that point it's hilarious.

At that point it's a Judd Apatow moment.

"Judd is, like, completely fearless," Reilly says. "I think that's the secret to his success right now."

Working as a producer, writer and director, Apatow towers above Hollywood comedy, at least for the moment. In addition to the Golden Globe nominated "Walk Hard," which he co-wrote and produced, Apatow wrote, produced and directed "Knocked Up" and produced "Superbad. "

And that's just this year.

MONEYMAKING WHIZ

Every era seems to have someone who dominates comedy, from Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen to the Farrelly brothers. This era belongs to Apatow.

Financially, he's a whiz. His movies have made more than $750 million, some of it seemingly out of nowhere.

No one expected "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" to make more than $100 million. Certainly no one expected "Superbad" to make more than $120 million or "Knocked Up" nearly $150 million.

Yet they did. It's not all due to Apatow, though; such films as "The Wedding Crashers" helped. But more than anyone else, Apatow has tapped into an adulthumor vein and tapped into it with gusto.

"I think at some point he realized, 'If I'm going to take a stab at this, I'm going to have to be totally open and honest and frank,' " says Reilly, who picked up a Golden Globe nomination for "Walk Hard."

Like Allen, Apatow works with a dependable stable of performers, including Seth Rogen and Reilly, consistently cranking out films that make people laugh and make money (the former having something to do with the latter). And, as like with Allen, you know what you're getting when you buy a ticket to an Apatow movie: laughs, many of them decidedly lowbrow, leavened with a touch of sweetness.

"The jokes themselves can be quite crude," says Peter Lehman, the director of the Arizona State University Center for Film, Media and Popular Culture. "But that doesn't make them a part of a vicious or negative context of racism or sexism or homophobia or anything like that. It's quite a delicate thing he pulls off. ...

"It's very hard to nail what the skill is that he has. There is a recognition on the part of the audience that this is not a man who is out to tell jokes that are aimed at homosexuals or racial groups or anyone else with ill will or anything like that. So he succeeds."

Apatow calls himself a big fan of people like James Brooks, Cameron Crowe and Garry Shandling.

"They see storytelling as a way to try to connect with people," Apatow says. "I'm trying to do human comedy. I look at the things I like best, like 'Terms of Endearment' or 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' or 'MASH,' and I'm trying to figure out how to put my own spin on it.

"But those are all ultimately movies or television shows that people cared about deeply and had something positive to say."

It's a tricky balance. A great thing about Apatow's films is how far they're willing to go, and how often.

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