![]() ![]() Zolghadri is an excellent actor whose portrayal of Robert is genuine and measured. The more Robert and his comrade-in-artistry Miles (Miles Emanuel) inquire about Wallace’s career, the worse things get for both of them.įor its first two thirds or so, Funny Pages is absolutely compelling. Katano’s absence, Robert tries vainly to enlist Wallace as a friend and advisor even as the older man wants nothing to do with the teenager or his needs. His landlord Barry (Michael Townsend Wright) and new roommate Steven (Cleveland Thomas Jr) live in a squalor so abject you can smell its funk and touch its sweat: they spend their days with wine and old movies, and Robert barely notices the multiple warning signs that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the ideal place to hone his craft.Įven so, Robert manages to land a job, inputting data for a public defender (Marcia DeBonis), where he meets Wallace (Matthew Maher), an outburst-prone fifty-something who used to work in comics. To his parents’ chagrin, he drops out of school, buys a car nicknamed “La Cucaracha, ” and rents a basement apartment in nearby Trenton to practice his craft. Katano’s instruction, he makes a series of rash choices. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis), an avuncular art instructor who teaches the young boy to draw anatomy-by exposing his own.īut when Robert is left, suddenly, to practice his craft without Mr. Obsessed by the bawdy, graphic “funny pages” of eras past, Robert apprentices under the tutelage of Mr. Openly contemptuous of the middle-class life his parents (Josh Pais, Maria Dizzia) have led and the college life they have planned for him, he rebels with his artistry. Zolghadri ( Eighth Grade) plays Robert, a high school senior employed at a local comic store in Princeton, New Jersey. ![]() And that’s a shame, as for the most part Funny Pages is as touching and telling a film as I’d seen all year. The story it tells is one cinema rarely takes time to examine, its depiction of a teenaged male on the precipice of adulthood keen with insight.Īnd yet, for all its strengths, its comic foibles and thoughtful insights, the film’s narrative loses its momentum as it approaches its third act. Its script is nuanced and earnest, its performances, especially from lead Daniel Zolghadri, impeccable, and its cinematography realistically grungy. In almost-almost-every way, writer-director Owen Kline’s new film F unny Pages is an absolute gem of a coming-of-age tale, a teen boy’s first venture toward independence and adulthood, set in and around the periphery of comic artistry and publishing. ![]()
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