Funny Pages

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....

Daniel Zolghadri ("Robert") is really quite good in this short drama. He is a budding cartoonist who is arrested breaking into the home of his recently deceased and inspirational art teacher. That all goes away, but the public defender who represented him takes a bit of a shine to his refreshingly candid style of drawing, and that is where he is introduced to another of her clients "Wallace" (Matthew Maher). Here is an interesting fellow. Eccentric to say the least, it transpires that he once worked on comic-book illustrations and so the young man determines to befriend and learn from this man. To be honest, some of the scenarios are a bit far fetched - especially the ones in the pharmacy and in his parents bathroom at Christmas, but for the most part this is an engagingly entertaining mix of the eclectic and the aspirational as seen through the eyes of a seventeen year old man. The production is pretty basic, but at times it is funny. Not laugh out loud, no - but in an observational way that might resonate with many a parent dealing with a teenage child who has all of the answers (but few of the questions). His basement flatmates "Barry" (Michael Townsend Wright) and his rather curious pal "Steven" (Cleveland Thomas Jr) add a quirky element to the already rather surreal plot that meanders all over the place before an ending that is both horrific and funny at the same time as his acne-ridden best mate "Miles" (Miles Emanuel) discovers a new use for a pen-nib! Will he find his soul? Well I'd recommend you watch and find out - it's well worth ninety minutes of your time.

I know there's some romantic / magic deep meaning with the ending, but I think if they made another type of ending, this movie would be much better.

For me that's just what lacked, a proper ending, more development between the characters, a next chapter, a continuation... A moral ending, or not, but we needed to get something in the end. But unfortunately, nothing really happens... And with that I just can't give a higher rating... But I really enjoyed the rest of the movie, amazing acting, great writing. I love the 90s vibe, very well done. And yeah, I love comics too.

The scenes with Barry are hilarious by the way.

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.

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.