Fun­ny Pages – first-look review

Few things sti­fle cre­ativ­i­ty like sub­ur­bia, and teenage car­toon­ist Robert (Daniel Zol­ghadri) can’t stand it any longer. Eschew­ing his par­ents’ expec­ta­tions he go to col­lege, he drops out of high school, moves out of his fam­i­ly home in Prince­ton, New Jer­sey, and rents a room in a grub­by base­ment with two mid­dle-aged men named Bar­ry (Michael Townsend Wright) and Steven (Cleve­land Thomas Jr).

For Robert, this unprece­dent­ed lib­er­a­tion brings him one step clos­er to artis­tic authen­tic­i­ty, and poten­tial­ly to releas­ing his dream of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al car­toon­ist – some­thing his teacher Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guir­gis) whole-heart­ed­ly encour­ages. He works part-time at a local com­ic store, noo­dles around with his fel­low car­toon enthu­si­ast Miles (Miles Emanuel) and even­tu­al­ly cross­es paths with bel­liger­ent fifty-some­thing Wal­lace (Matthew Maher), who is less than enthu­si­as­tic about the prospect of hav­ing a teenage tagalong.

This might appear to be the set-up for a charm­ing inter­gen­er­a­tional bud­dy com­e­dy, but Owen Kline’s debut fea­ture Fun­ny Pages glee­ful­ly wrong­foots view­ers in its explo­ration of artis­tic impuls­es and the rela­tion­ship between craft and cre­ativ­i­ty. As Robert rejects his mid­dle-class upbring­ing in favour of a grot­ty apart­ment in Tren­ton (which earned the dubi­ous hon­our of ​‘Worst cap­i­tal city to live in’ in 2018) he seeks artis­tic inspi­ra­tion from the odd­balls he encoun­ters both in his new home and new job inputting data for a local pub­lic defender.

The car­toons he cre­ates about these peo­ple imply a sort of naïve voyeurism for Robert, which may not be mean-spir­it­ed, but does seem to indi­cate a feel­ing of supe­ri­or­i­ty, even as he pro­fess­es to idolise Wal­lace once he realis­es the man used to work as a colour sep­a­ra­tor for a huge com­ic pub­lish­er. It’s dark­ly amus­ing, then, that Wal­lace con­tin­u­al­ly sees Robert as a thorn in his side (albeit an occa­sion­al­ly use­ful one) rather than being flat­tered by his inter­est, negat­ing expec­ta­tions that Fun­ny Pages has any inter­est in a redemp­tion arc.

Instead this com­ing-of-age nar­ra­tive has some harsh real­i­ties in store for its ado­les­cence pro­tag­o­nist, under­scored with a sense of acute dread that some­thing awful might befall the earnest but naïve Robert at any moment. In its third act the film fal­ters a lit­tle, tail­ing off rather than com­ing to a con­clu­sion – this could be a result of first fea­ture teething prob­lems, as at a svelte 85 min­utes Fun­ny Pages verges on feel­ing unfinished.

Nev­er­the­less Zol­ghadri is a com­pelling lead, striv­ing for matu­ri­ty and authen­tic­i­ty when the safe­ty and com­fort of his par­ents’ house is but a short dri­ve away. Sur­round­ed by a cast of off­beat char­ac­ter actors (Safdie fans will recog­nise some return­ing faces) who inhab­it their roles with a laud­able gus­to, Zol­ghadri is the lone bea­con of calm amid a fraught tableau. The influ­ence of the Safdie broth­ers – long­time friends and pro­duc­ers on the film through their Elara pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny – is evi­dent on Kline, who also brings on Sean Price Williams as cinematographer.

The film’s grainy, hand­held style might be a sig­na­ture of the East Coast lo-fi scene which has emerged with the likes of the Safdies and Alex Ross Per­ry, but feels appro­pri­ate in a film about aes­thet­ic scum­mi­ness and the grand cul­tur­al tra­di­tion of rich kids sell­ing them­selves as starv­ing artists, some­thing Kline (son of Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline) prob­a­bly has a few thoughts about.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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