Funny Ha Ha

where have we heard this before? Ah yes, Woody Allen on down to his character actor acquaintance Larry David (creator of Seinfeld), etc...., etc.... Yes, it was once a novel idea. In 1979.

Has anyone who watched this ever seen Woody Allen's "Manhattan"? you will be interested in the parallels.

This was filmed primarily in Allston and Cambridge, and I agree with an early reviewer, who stated that a mirror image of his own single life there was reflected. Imagine each person living in The Back Bay or South End with a similar story. After all everyone has experienced the void of dating, working in Boston,(or any metro area city) and going home alone on your birthday. Not exactly earth shattering.

Kate Dollenmayer is not bad as the primary character, but Andrew Bujalski has so many Allen-like mannerisms, it is almost embarrassing to watch. The only members of the audience who will not pick this out would have to be 17 years old, at most.

There are a few decent scenes, the awkwardness Kate feels with an old boyfriend, the vacuous conversation at a keg party, but really; is this considered different?. If it is, then next time you or I go to the supermarket we should tag along someone with a handy cam, start a conversation, and we too would be considered a writer/director.

First time filmmaker Andrew Bujalski's extremely low-budget feature "Funny Ha Ha" has many of the hallmarks of an early John Cassavetes film: grainy camera-work, minimalist storytelling, and naturalistic, ad lib performances.

Bujalski's cast of characters is made up entirely of white urban youth in their early to mid 20's - that awkward period in life after an individual has finished college yet before he has moved on to building his own career and family. Given what appears to be their first real taste of freedom and independence, the characters do little but sit around, get drunk, and talk about their romantic relationships, but Bujalski observes all this without hysteria and judgment, thereby lending the film the aura of real life being caught on film. The focal point is an attractive young woman named Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) who drinks a bit too much, seems vaguely directionless and lacking in energy, and is somewhat inexperienced in the ways of love, but who, nevertheless, seems reasonably well grounded and knows her own limits as a person.

"Funny Ha Ha," despite its occasional raggedness and self-indulgence, is blessedly free of contrivance and melodramatics. These may not be the most goal-oriented or socially-conscious youth we've ever encountered in the movies, but neither are they the most troubled or self-destructive. They seem like pretty ordinary kids living in the moment and only vaguely aware that there's a world outside of themselves that they are destined to become a part of in the very near future.

The beauty of the dialogue rests in its ability to capture with uncanny accuracy the way people in the real world actually speak. The characters interact in ways that are genuine and believable, and life just seems to be unfolding as we watch it on screen. This is due in small measure to the fine performances from a cast of virtual unknowns who know how to appear relaxed, honest and natural in front of the camera.

With its improvisational and off-the-cuff film-making style and its abrupt, the-camera-just-ran-out-of-film ending, "Funny Ha Ha" makes us feel as if we are eavesdropping on the daily lives of a handful of relative strangers. Lucky for us, they turn out to be people in whom we can see something of ourselves reflected, and with whom we enjoy spending our time.

Looking like a documentary, this movie captures well life at the age of the characters, that I remember when I was that age: direction-less and insecure. The problem is, a glimpse into people's personal lives aren't necessarily interesting, and I wanted more to happen or for the story to be more interesting. I also wondered why characters we saw a lot of in the beginning of the movie, simply disappeared with no explanation. Alex's unexpected marriage was never explained, nor did Marnie seem to try to find out how this marriage came about. In keeping with the theme of a segment of someone's life snipped out randomly and put on film, the ending provided no resolution to anything, but I felt it could have been less abrupt and arbitrary.

I saw "Funny Ha Ha" at the IFP LA Film Festival on June 18, 2003. It's an attempt at naturalistic filmmaking. It has its moments, but the movie intentionally has no plot, and for some reason this works against the film (ha ha). "Life has no plot" is the theme, but they picked a life that's not too interesting, the life of "Marnie" played by Kate Dollenmayer. Incidently, in real life she is or was the roommate of the director (Bujalski), and they are both graduate film students. So you have the educated elite portraying what they think "real life" is all about.

Since is was a film festival, I got to ask the director (Andrew Bujalski) about the ending (no spoiler here). I found the ending quite disappointing, but he (and others in the audience) seemed to find the ending satisfactory since the end wasn't "pat." His explanation of the low-budget process of making the movie, and his decision to film it on 16mm film in Boston were actually more interesting than the movie itself.

The characters in this film are white college graduates who are happy or unhappy with their lives after graduation. It's hard to root for any of them, they basically come across as a whiny elite who live in nice apartments and complain about their shallow lives... it's pretty forgetable. Bujalski is quite skilled as both an actor and a director, but he needs a more compelling story to tell, where we actually care about what happens in the next scene.

An ultra-low budget film about aimless twenty-somethings wasting their lives brings to mind Richard Lindlater's 'Slacker'; and while Andrew Bujalski's film lacks that movie's experimental formlessness, it does share something of the same mood. The cinematography has the feel of a super-eight home movie; but the piece is acutely observed and feels real throughout. Unfortuantly, it's just not that interesting, in part because its characters just aren't that interesting, and in a sense this isn't accidental; their directionless existence owes much to the fact that they simply haven't lived enough to have anything to care about, anything to say. And while there should be a profound sadness underpinning this, and some sociological analysis, the film never seems to scrape below its surface of whiny, unhappy people. You wouldn't dislike these people in real life, but if they have any notable attributes, they're not on display, and you wouldn't go out of your way to spend time in their company. But what's true of the characters is sadly also true of the film that contains them.