Funny Pages

The grungy "idiosyncratic indie movement" (as one critic called the movement of "new Harmony Korines" that explore the most pitiful lifeforms of America's underbelly), which includes the likes of Sean Baker and the Safdie brothers, now has a new member in the form of Owen Kline and his impressive debut Funny Pages.

It stars Daniel Zolghadri (Tales from the Loop) as Robert, a young man who aspires to be an artist -- specifically, a comic strip artist. It doesn't take place in some past golden age of Sunday funnies, yet it feels like it; much like Spencer and Compartment No. 6, the film is presented through a grainy image that makes it feel remarkably "90s".

I do relate to growing up on the funnies: while others flipped through Spider-Man comics, I read Dilbert, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Bloom County, The Far Side, and whatever else appeared in the Gary Larson magazines my father used to collect. (My grandmother also used to cut out the funnies of our local newspaper, which included the likes of Beetle Bailey and Zits, and staple them together into little books for me and my cousins to read.)

Of course, Robert is more into the R. Crumb stuff. His is a world of Tijuana Bibles and nauseating caricatures, and this includes the people he encounters in real life (who are among the most beautifully grotesque figures in the A24 pantheon).

Also, it contains one of the most blood-curdling screams I've ever heard in cinema and it's not even a horror film. Flanagan, eat your heart out.

"Funny Pages" is a movie about a boy that decides to leave school, in order to chase his dream to become a professional comic book artist. The trailer is very misleading: I thought that this was going to be some sort of coming of age comedy, with a nice plot. Nothing really happens in one hour and a half: there is no character development, no story evolution and no interesting or useful messages. Some scenes are just messy and poorly directed and the story does not make any sense. The ending is so disruptive and I wondered what was even the point of this film. I could not empathize with the protagonist that for the whole time was just behaving like a spoiled brat, I really hated him. Acting was sloppy, not even Josh Pais, who took part in important projects such as "The Joker ", could not save this mess. Out of this experience, I just understood that the director deeply hates the world of comics. He painted all the fans of this media like losers that do not have any ambition in life. I don't know the comic book industry well, but I am pretty sure that there are many talented and successful artists that have brilliant careers. This stereotypification of the nerd culture is old and pretty annoying. There is not one single person that is normal in this film, they are all social misfits.

I appreciate the fact that A24 is giving the chance to beginner directors to show their work to the world, but I think that there should be a better quality check when they decide to distribute something, because honestly it is becoming harder and harder to justify these awful releases.

A coming of age story about a rebellious teenager who hates his parents for wanting him to go to college and be serious about his studies, when all he wants is draw cartoons and become an artist.

A lot of nerds. A lot of whining parents. And a lot of frustration suffered by teenagers. We have seen it all before. Is it any good?

The good; I must say that this is an honest movie with true to life characters. It'll do as a nice coming of age portrait, BUT...

The bad: this is not a new teenager classic, because it is lacking spark and punch and the actor's aint particularly great.

Not bad, not great either....

Funny Pages is a movie about repulsive losers by first time writer director Owen Kline. A tourist in the world of comics collectors and trash ephemera enthusiasts, Kline noticeably cribs the template for his cast of characters from Terry Zwigoff's films Crumb (1994) and Art School Confidential (2006). This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that Kline possesses none of Zwigoff's affinity for societal misfits. Zwigoff knows his subjects intimately and empathizes with their struggles and their sadness, where Kline can only identify what is weird and disgusting about them.

Owen Kline is the son of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, two of the most beautiful people alive, and with his background of extraordinary privilege and wealth it seems a strange choice to make a film about poor struggling outcasts, the likes of which he would be unlikely to cross paths with in his world. Funny Pages' inhabitants are never allowed to be anything other than nauseating caricatures of their specific class, which is unfortunate because there isn't a bad performance in the movie, this being especially true in the case of Matthew Maher who is fantastic in his role.

Look, I can appreciate a bizarre movie. It's weirdness is why I give it the initial 4 stars, but there's not much else I enjoyed about it.

I'm not sure how this movie is considered a comedy, unless you describe it as "less funny haha, more funny peculiar". I'm not sure what anyone could have laughed at here, as it felt like no jokes were made.

We meet a cast of strange characters (or caricatures), but no one seems to make any sense at all. And that's fine, some of the characters are intended to be "unhinged", but even the main character, his parents, and his friend's decisions seem devoid of logic. It's like a slice of life story, except with a boy constantly finding himself in weird situations that he just kind of loafs around in.

The "climax" felt unsurprising (though visually disconcerting). The ending felt like they just got bored filming. Ultimately I don't feel like I gained anything besides a sense of "huh, that was weird and made me a little uncomfortable".

I guess I should have known what to expect after the first 10 minutes.