Funny Pages (2022)

We liked this story of a high school senior who writes and illustrates dirty (AKA underground) comics and doesn't want to go to college, to his parents' dismay. Daniel Zolghadri plays Robert and his parents are Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais. The part of Robert's best friend Miles was written for Miles Emanuel (more on that in a moment). Matthew Maher is featured as an unbalanced character and Louise Lasser makes a cameo as the Pharmacy Lady (in a wheelchair). I have to guess that naming our protagonist Robert is an homage to underground comic artist R. Crumb, whose first name is actually Robert and whose style is appropriated.

Owen Kline, the 31 year old son of Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, makes his feature directing/writing/co-editing debut after a few shorts. I often quote from the scene in which he played Jeff Daniels' son in The Squid and the Whale (2005) (it's at the end of this clip). Apparently, in real life, Kline was working at a video store twelve years ago and 11 year old Emanuel came in to rent a Bergman film and they stayed in touch.

No composer is credited. I put in my notes that there were twelve songs and today I found this playlist of five on Spotify. Since it's been almost seven weeks since I saw it, and no soundtrack items are listed on imdb, I can't verify if the five songs were actually in the movie.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that, although Zolghadri is right-handed, Kline, who's a lefty, insisted that the character draw with his left and Kline was the hand double for the close-ups.

Pais was last blogged for Going in Style and Maher for It's Kind of a Funny Story, though both have had plenty of work since then. Zolghadri was in Eighth Grade and more. Though her name is new to these pages, Dizzia's many credits include Rachel Getting Married, Martha Marcy May Marlene, While We're Young, Going in Style, and 18 episodes of Orange Is the New Black. This is Emanuel's second feature acting gig. Lasser is best known for the title role in 325 episodes of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77) and has dozens of other credits, though only a few lately.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics smiled with an average of 82%, while its audiences remained straight faced at 47.  However, festival attendees at the 2022 Cannes Festival gave it a three minute standing ovation.

We rented it on Apple TV/iTunes on September 15.