Funny Pages
Cert 18 | ★★★★★

As a child actor, Owen Kline (son of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) starred alongside Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg in Noah Baumbach’s acclaimed 2005 dark comedy The Squid and the Whale.

Kline played the troubled 12-year-old son of a well- to- do upper middle class New York couple going through a divorce, and earned huge praise for his honest portrayal of a young man caught in the midst of a family crisis.

Forgoing a chance of stardom, Owen decided against pursuing an acting career and went back to school but is now back with an impressive first feature as writer-director in this coming-of-age tale about a teenage cartoonist who rejects the comforts of his suburban life in a quest for adventure in the city.

Robert (Daniel Zolghadri, Eighth Grade) believes that to be an artist is to suffer. To the despair of his parents (played by Josh Pais and Maria Dizzia), the young man gives up on his affluent Princeton upbringing, drops out of high school and moves to a stuffy New Jersey apartment in search for inspiration.

His best friend Miles (Miles Emanuel) is a fellow comic enthusiast, and they spend much of their time at the local comic store, obsessing over the work of artists such as Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes and Harvey Pekar.

Kline’s film is populated with grotesque, extraordinary and sometimes very unlikely characters all vying for our attention.

Inspired, one imagines, by the likes of fellow East Coast native Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Wiener-Dog), Kline has given us, one of the most original films of 2022 in this quietly bonkers indie comedy.

Produced by award-winning Jewish filmmaking duo Josh and Benny Safdie (Good Time, Uncut Gems) through the much lauded and hyped indie outfit A24, Funny Pages already feels like a classic New York tale with its myriad of intricate dynamics and outlandish characters.

Zolghadri carries the film with the kind of self assured nonchalance rarely seen on screen. His character’s wide-eyed optimism, although clearly misguided, is both infectious and genuinely awe-inspiring.

The young filmmaker has written a selection of characters and misfits one can’t help but fall in love with. Much like the Safdies, Baumbach and Solondz, this is a filmmaker who seems not in the least affected by current trends.

Much much like his central character, his quest for artistic purity has yielded a true diamond in the rough.