Funny Pages

Funny Pages understands that being truly committed to comics, the lowest form in all the arts (except for performance poetry, of course), is an express ticket to a life of social misery and alienation.

What an auspicious debut for Kline and what a fine showcase for all other parties.

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.

Whilst there’s not much emotion to cling on to, the parade of uniquely absurd characters and agonising situations make it a real page turner.

Zolghadri, a newcomer, is a natural lead, and boasts an easygoing, Fred Savage from The Wonder Years energy, but Kline, from behind the camera, is the movie’s real star.

The movie is set in the present but has the bleachy look and antic energy of a lost American burlesque by Hal Ashby or Elaine May, time capsuled in 1974.

The grittiness of Sean Price Williams’ cinematography and atmosphere carries Owen Kline’s Funny Pages, but the rest falters – a coming-of-age feature lacking focus, coherence, and laughter.

How unpleasant this all is, from beginning to end, without being actually funny. This film will find its constituency, for sure.

It brings the lewd scenarios of those "funnies" to life 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.

Kline and his creative company cultivate a compelling and refreshingly amoral odyssey of a self-assured teenager coming face-to-face with the uncompromising world around him.