DIRECTOR: Owen Kline
CAST: Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Miles Emanuel, Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Marcia DeBonis, Michael Townsend Wright, Cleveland Thomas Jr., Ron Rifkin, Tony Hassini, Andy Milonakis, Mitchell Wenig
RUNNING TIME: 86 mins
CERTIFICATE: 18
BASICALLY…: A young aspiring cartoonist (Zolghadri) embarks on a misguided journey of self-discovery…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Comic-book movies are everywhere these days, but movies about comic-books, and their eccentric creators, are a slightly rarer breed. Funny Pages, the feature debut of writer-director Owen Kline – known to some audiences as a former child actor, most notably in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale – falls alongside similarly idiosyncratic films concerning graphic novelists like American Splendor or Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed documentary Crumb (or even the notorious Freddy Got Fingered, which is also about a graphic artist albeit under more outrageous pretences), but Kline’s film is the kind of literal comic-book movie that, much like the obscene doodles glimpsed throughout, leaves you with a particularly bitter taste in the mouth that is hard to erase. It is also, for audiences willing to stomach it, a darkly amusing ride.
Approaching his odd tale as if Todd Solondz directed The 400 Blows, Kline opens his film up with a seemingly inspirational scene of Robert (Daniel Zolghardi), a young and clearly talented cartoonist, receiving plentiful words of encouragement by his art teacher Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis). However, this Dead Poets Society-baiting conversation takes a rather awkward turn when Katano suddenly strips naked and asks his young student to draw him in all his glory, a moment that is eclipsed by the cruel fate that is bestowed upon him in the very next scene. For Robert, though, the encouragement from his teacher matters more than the predatory behaviour, which is enough to convince him to drop out of high school – much to the disappointment of his Princeton-based parents (Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais) – and begin working his way towards a career in graphic artistry.
In keeping with the uncomfortable tone of his opening scene, Kline then has his young protagonist find lodgings in a sweaty, dingy basement shared by two very creepy tenants (one has the kind of combover and behavioural tendencies you’d find on a typical episode of To Catch a Predator), and acquire a low-paying job as a typist in a lawyer’s office. It is here where he comes across a client named Wallace (Matthew Maher), an unpleasant fellow who’s seeking legal counsel for an attempted assault at a pharmacy, but once again Robert neglects his clearly deranged personality when he learns that Wallace was once a colourist for noted publisher Image Comics, and immediately sets out to befriend him in some way in order to gain some useful career advice. The problem is, Wallace really is a nasty piece of work, and to an extent so is Robert whose misguided optimism barely cloaks his inexperienced, and borderline pretentious, view of the world.
The earlier comparison to the work of Todd Solondz is alarmingly accurate, as much like the wildly vulgar and cynical features that the Welcome to the Dollhouse filmmaker likes to put out, Kline’s Funny Pages delights in making the audience feel as repulsed as possible, using lots of close-up shots on characters’ faces to give a sense of claustrophobia as they look upon every grotesque pore at microscopic levels. Kline is relatively fearless in how unpleasant his film can be to watch, right down to a grainy film-stock look that is plastered across its frames like you’re watching a 70s-era exploitation movie, and characters who, whether they’re main or side, would act no different if they were in an extreme horror movie like, say, Cannibal Holocaust. One minor character, an obnoxious elderly woman in a pharmacy that the protagonist visits at some point under Wallace’s orders (and may or may not be the same one he’s been charged with assault in), is more intimidating and even scarier than some of the villains in actual horror movies this year, because she just makes both the protagonist and the audience feel so uncomfortable around her that you’re almost rooting for the deranged, psychotic Wallace to come in and “save” the day.
Kline frequently leaves you so on edge with his (intentionally) rather ugly style that it’s almost enough to make you forget that, in actuality, Funny Pages is one of the more sobering coming-of-age movies in a while. It has such a cynical and hopeless view of the world that is entirely free of nostalgia or rose-tinted optimism, which our young protagonist Robert (in a well-composed performance by Daniel Zolghardi) is trying so desperately hard to put one step forward in, but it’s clear that his own ambitions and undeveloped view of the world – for all his knowledge and passion for graphic art, he’s still a moody teen from the affluent Princeton suburbs – are no match for what this universe dictates is really out there. How Kline handles this development, throughout an increasingly uneasy climax involving smashed windows, crashed cars and a piercing scream from the gory aftermath of a struggle – all of which, incidentally, takes place on Christmas, technically making it a festive movie too – is the kind of solemn crashing back down to Earth for a protagonist normally reserved for classics like Saturday Night Fever and Call Me By Your Name (talking of which, the end credits for this are bound to draw stylistic personalities to the latter movie). By that point, you’ll feel like you have gone on just as battering a journey as Robert has, only to learn a drab and pessimistic lesson about how the world is rougher than his sketch outlines.
Of course, this movie is not going to appease the masses – with its ugly, Bizarro inspirational movie vibes, it’s no wonder this is receiving bad audience feedback on Rotten Tomatoes – but for niche crowds who have the stomach and patience to put up with it, even for its rather short 80-odd minute runtime, Funny Pages is a dark and unpleasant delight. It’s a bold debut feature for Kline, who plays it so unsafe that it almost hurts, and who could well be the unexpected successor to Todd Solondz if he decides to go further down this road of making just the most uncomfortable and devilishly mean-spirited movies imaginable. Now that’s quite the unexpected turnaround for the guy who was once the young kid in The Squid and the Whale.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Funny Pages is a darkly amusing black comedy that takes the inspirational movie formula and Todd Solondz-es the hell out of it, with writer-director Owen Kline delivering an intentionally ugly style to an equally unpleasant story and set of characters, which all add up to a sobering coming-of-age tale with a deeply cynical, but refreshingly so, attitude toward the supposedly prosperous world out there.
