Customer Reviews

Funny Ha Ha

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is the real thing. A genuine indie-flick without the pretentiousness or quirkiness or "big-issue" feel that has pigeonholed the "Sundance" style film. This is just a remarkably fresh and engaging story about a young woman figuring herself out; a film that plays with the ambiguities that comes from an age/culture that doesn't want to judge anybody or anything but where individuals can still be hurt by the actions of others. The dialogue is as perfect and genuine and real and awkward as anything I've seen on film (or in life, in people of this age). I knew people like the characters here in college and grad school, and the story kept me involved and caring about them. I agree with other reviewers that this film is easily as important and interesting as other major indie debuts like Stranger than Paradise, Slackers, Clerks, and Sex Lies and Videotape. Here's hoping that as Andrew Bujalski (and his stellar cast) finds the much-deserved acclaim from this film he doesn't lose the honesty and edge of this simple, low budget masterpiece.

Check out rave reviews in every major daily in cities where the film played LA, NY, Austin, SF, Boston. This on top of good notices in Entertainment Weekly, Variety and an Independent Spirit Award to boot.

The film basically a different kind of horror movie for adults-where the threat of death or physical harm isn't a problem, but where trying to finish a sentence, say what's on your mind(or even know what's on your mind)produce moments of great terror and comedy at the same time. This is the kind of film that in the only recently marginalized world of indie cinema would share in the same accolades given Stranger Than Paradise, Slacker
and early Mike Leigh. It's that good.

Most of the ha-ha's in Funny Ha Ha are not exactly funny: Andrew Bujalski's debut feature is foremost a squirming comedy of recognition. This Boston ultra-indie-which Bujalski wrote, directed, edited, and co-starred in-slouches through the blurry limbo of post-collegiate existence, a period at once ephemeral and cruelly decisive. It opens with 23-year-old heroine Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) stumbling into a tattoo parlor, where the proprietor refuses to ink her because she's plastered. This movie is about the fear of the permanent-and the barely conscious, unwittingly reckless processes behind life-altering decisions-might be subtitled The Possibly Indelible Adventures of a Desultory Twentysomething.

Structured around nonevent and inaction, Funny Ha Ha recalls Jamie Thraves's 2000 British indie The Low Down, a neglected mini-masterpiece of quarter-life malaise. Bujalski's film likewise thrums with ambivalent dread-underlying the characters' inert indecision is a reluctance to let the rest of their lives begin, not least for fear that it might prove an undifferentiated haze. The final scene is as close to perfection as any Amerindie has come in recent memory-in a single reaction of Marnie's, we see a small but definite shift in perspective; abruptly, Bujalski stops the film, as if there's nothing more to say. It's a wonderful parting shot for a movie that locates the momentous in the mundane.

It's both obvious and inexplicable why the release of ''Funny Ha Ha" went nowhere for so long. Obvious: The film lacks polish. Inexplicable: That's part of its charm. (Bujalski has a bracingly unadorned style, and Matthias Grunsky's handheld photography is actually quite lovely.) Obvious: The cast is full of amateurs, especially Kate Dollenmayer, the woman playing Marnie, the film's heroine. Inexplicable: She is also one of the most simply complicated movie characters I've ever seen.

One of the beauties of Bujalski's writing and directing is the way little slights resonate with Marnie. She has to hear from Rachel and Dave (Jennifer L. Schaper and Myles Paige) that Alex (Christian Rudder), her longstanding crush, has just broken up with his girlfriend. That's ridiculous: She just ran into him, and he didn't mention that at all. But, as ''Funny Ha Ha" illustrates with great accuracy, that's life.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Funny Ha Ha is an important film, maybe a pivotal film showing a new direction for filmmakers, maybe not filmmakers, but digital filmmakers. Sure, made with 16 mm, but really, Andrew Bujalski, director and actor, could have filmed for far less money with a digital camera. For those of us writing our own stuff and lining up our amateur actors, Funny Ha Ha is a wild success.

A nerds dream, Kate Dollenmayer, not so pretty that the good lookin' guys whisk her away, but quirky, and cute enough for the nerds to go bananas. As a twenty-three year-old ex-college student, she is bored out of her mind by paper shuffling jobs and a social whirl that is not unlike dorm life, but more urban trendy in a run down apartment way. Ah, how we remember all those crash pads of yore. Nothing has changed since the sixties. Kate drinks too much, wanders around in a daze too much, and is in love with a guy as dazed and unsure as she. She could have sex anytime with anyone to relieve tension, but has sex not at all. A couple of kisses with a boy here and there are as much as our slackers will chance. I got a kick out of the Russian Scholar Woman's interpretation of Marnie's lifestyle in the commentary feature. She claims that two-hundred years ago falling in love was dangerous. Either you got married, had a family, or you killed yourself. Today, these slackers of the last half century take no risk in love. They merely move in circular social sets defined by their lack of articulation. No one ever says I love you aloud seriously. Every dude and dudette subsists in a soup bowl of ironies.

Not the laugh riot its title suggests, this gently humorous indie stars Kate Dollenmayer as a recent college grad who's drifting and stumbling into adulthood. Maybe it's all her partying with alumni buds. Or the fact that she's still crushing on friend Christian Rudder, who's just not that into her. Or because she was recently fired while asking for a raise. Bummer. What's a mopey, aimless chick to do? Dollenmayer dives into the temp pool and catches the eye of nervous doofus Andrew Bujalski (who wrote and directed this). The painfully earnest guy tries his clumsy best, but the spurned nerd can't win more than her friendship. Despite its student-film look and hesitant start, this low-budget flick definitely grows on you, as do its awkward characters and their, like, we don't know, stuttered but kinda endearing, um, slacker-speak. Ha Ha is an honest portrait of twentysomething dating--and one with lots of heart.

Marnie is such a complex character. she can't be reduced to any simple adjectives, and I read something somewhere about how this director wants his characters' lives to "go around corners" (like Mike Leigh used to say). anyway, he explained that he wants the audience to imagine that the characters have lives even when you dont see them. i look at it like hes making a film where he doesnt have to hold our hands and lets us appraoch it like grown-ups. kind of appropriate for a film that is sort of about that approach to life.

i cant recommend this film strongly enough. if you love movies, and you want to see something that makes you keep thinking about bits and pieces and scenes for days, then this is your kind of movie.

amazing performaces make it feel like youre watching real peoples' lives, not characters. saw this in new york back in the spring, been waiting for the dvd-- definitely recommend.

Andrew Bujalski's quietly impressive "Funny Ha Ha" uses the uncertain future of a smart but shy, post-graduate Boston woman as the launching pad for a beautifully observant and wholly unpretentious film with roots more in Cassavetes than Sundance-style showbiz. Made under the sway of the DIY (Do It Yourself) art movement, pic is a deliberate throwback to a much earlier American indie period, when filmmakers shot on 16mm, recorded in mono and didn't bother with a production company moniker. Besides being a surefire fest item, the film could have a bracing effect on adventurous auds and young filmmakers alike given the right distrib handling.

"Funny Ha Ha" serves as a memorable debut for first-time thesp Kate Dollenmayer, whose Marnie becomes unselfconsciously emblematic of an entire generation of over-educated, under-employed American youth.

Marnie is first seen drunk at a tattoo parlor, but she's hardly some "bad girl"; rather, she seems to take each step through life gingerly, not quite sure where to walk next. Randomness seems to rule her existence: She runs into friends Dave and Rachel (Myles Paige, Jennifer L. Schaper) and tags along with them to dinner, where she admits to Rachel that she has a crush on Alex (Christian Rudder) but instinctively -- and, it eventually turns out, correctly -- senses that it will go nowhere.

Film introduces characters and situations, and then allows them to percolate naturally to the surface. At her new temp office job, Marnie is seated alongside nice but ultra-nebbishy Mitchell (Bujalski), whose awkward way of showing interest in her doesn't emerge until his desperation move on her during her last day on the job.

The subsequent dates between Marnie and Mitchell surely rank among the most painfully awkward and real encounters between the sexes in recent movies, culminating in the sort of thoughtless and spontaneous behavior that goes on all the time in real life, but almost never on screen.

Bujalski's improv approach is gracefully married with a style that is not overly-dramatic, and therefore seems just a hair short of pure documentary. Even unexpected encounters that other directors may have exploited for intense dramatic effect, such as a drunk Dave suddenly kissing Marnie in a car, play out and then fade away with the natural pulse of everyday life.

Just as underplayed are myriad character details, such as Marnie's evident interest in religion, that are gently observed but never underlined.

The non-pro cast appears inspired from the first frame, none more so than Dollenmayer, who invests Marnie with a genuine expression of innocence concealing a certain adult wisdom that keeps her out of serious trouble. Dollenmayer is uncommonly attuned to Marnie's moment-by-moment responses --and knack for confused and confusing conversations, the film's constant source of wit.

Tech package couldn't be less slick, and this becomes the movie's true badge of honor.

This low-budget indie film by twenty-six-year-old Harvard grad director/writer/editor Andrew Bujalski is a scream. It's a pitch-perfect romantic comedy slice of life film that gets inside the heads of its slacker twentysomething subjects and keeps things moving in a natural way that adds to the charm of the genuine landscape created. Bujalski makes his debut feature a gem, using in a low-key way a wonderful nonprofessional cast. He shot it on-location in Boston on 16 mm film. It covers the haphazard doings of the aimless 24-year-old slacker Marnie.

The inarticulate and unassuming heroine can't make contact with others despite all her efforts to converse with friends, go out to dinner with them and attend parties. Marnie goes through a series of drunken conversations, flirtateous encounters, and personal misapprehensions, and comes out of it in the same foggy way she first began--still unable to make the transition from college life to being an adult.