Rating: R | Runtime: 86 minutes
Release Date: August 26th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Owen Kline
Writer(s): Owen Kline

Got any Betty and Veronicas?

Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) has a formative champion in high school art teacher Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis)—his idol. To hear that man praise him supplies all the confidence he needs to let an untimely death push him into rolling the dice and forsaking the establishment before it’s too late. Why waste time with college when the raw talent and bitingly subversive humor at his disposal is already attuned to greatness in the underground world?

The easy answer is security, of course. There’s a reason Katano is teaching after all. But the romantic notion of living a bohemian lifestyle—especially coming from the affluence Robert’s parents (Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais) possess—is too alluring to actually think long-term. Do it now and damn the consequences.

This central aspect of a spoiled child rebelling against his privilege precisely because he has the safety net to try and fail is the most intriguing part of Funny Pages both because it gives meaning to Robert’s actions and because writer/director Owen Kline is the son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates. If anyone knows how it feels to be connected and yet wish for the lo-fi lifestyle of starving artists as though it’s a rite of passage rather than a way out, it’s him.

And he is self-aware enough to realize it, constantly putting his lead character into complex situations with stakes that never match the fanboy entitlement or rose-colored glasses with which Robert sees them. He leaves home to experience “life” only to discover just how much those living it wish to escape.

Are there enough authentically poignant moments like the mentally unstable Wallace (Matthew Maher) screaming at Robert to stop romanticizing another man’s failure to offset what’s at times an exploitative comedy at its less fortunate characters’ expense? Probably not. But I do like Kline’s sense of humor and penchant for going for broke when it comes to really highlighting how the depravity in the comics Robert loves is very much based in reality.

As such, this is not going to be a film for everyone. It brings the lewd scenarios of those “funnies” to life (before Robert then puts them back to paper) in all their grotesque splendor, placing the extreme nature of the gags above narrative from frame number one. So, while it doesn’t completely work for me, I do applaud the boldness.

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(L-R) Matthew Maher and Daniel Zolghadri in FUNNY PAGES; courtesy of A24.