Funny Pages
A24 | Release Date: August 26, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
UproxxVince ManciniSep 3, 2022
A lot of movies are funny, but very few are funny on a cellular level. Few announce themselves as something different from the very first frames. Even most good comedies are mostly built from familiar situations and people, but Funny Pages is that rare breed; bewildering and strange before its characters even begin speaking and projecting its inherent twistedness with every aspect of its construction. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 25, 2022
There’s nothing remotely cool about Robert or, really, Funny Pages. That’s because cool is entirely beside the point. What matters is a sensibility, a worldview — what matters is art. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 28, 2022
This is a genuinely bizarre, startling, freewheelingly lo-fi and funny indie picture with the refreshing bad-taste impact of Todd Solondz or Robert Crumb. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanAug 23, 2022
The first feature from Owen Kline, Funny Pages is not a dramatic masterpiece, but its setting, tone, look, feel, and casting would send real comic book geeks off doing cartwheels—if only we possessed the coordination. Instead, it will have to suffice to sit there, mouths open with the typical drool, thinking “I feel seen.” Read full review
88
Slant MagazineDerek SmithAug 23, 2022
Funny Pages eschews the platitudes and carefully scripted character arcs that often cause coming-of-age tales to feel not only predictable but coated in a sheen of nostalgia. Read full review
83
ColliderRoss BonaimeAug 26, 2022
Funny Pages is a beguiling debut, but it’s also one of the most compelling and unique takes on the coming-of-age genre in years. Read full review
83
IndieWireVikram MurthiAug 24, 2022
Ideas might be recycled in “Funny Pages,” but they’re converted into something distinct. Read full review
83
The Film StageLeonardo GoiMay 28, 2022
It’s a work as faithful to its peculiar milieu as it is universal in its themes—a coming-of-age that feels, in a wistful and cumulatively moving way, like going back in time. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Xan BrooksSep 20, 2022
Funny Pages spins a hilarious tale from the fringes of the underground comics scene, powered by a wonderfully sour performance by Daniel Zolghadri as Robert, a teenage cartoonist who strikes out on his own. Read full review
80
EmpireJake CunninghamSep 16, 2022
Owen Kline’s debut is a hectic portrait of a volatile artist, swirling in a thick, uneasy atmosphere. 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. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 16, 2022
What an auspicious debut for Kline and what a fine showcase for all other parties. Read full review
80
Little White LiesHannah StrongSep 15, 2022
In its third act the film falters a little, tailing off rather than coming to a conclusion – this could be a result of first feature teething problems, as at a svelte 85 minutes Funny Pages verges on feeling unfinished. Nevertheless, Zolghadri is a compelling lead, striving for maturity and authenticity when the safety and comfort of his parents’ house is but a short drive away. Read full review
80
CineVueChristopher MachellSep 15, 2022
Kline perfectly captures the out-of-jointness of our age, defined by a generation caught by social and economic decline in a state of permanent instability. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineSaffron MaeveAug 31, 2022
Funny Pages has all the bells and whistles of a Safdie joint, from the hustler caught in a hellish loop to the frenetic coda set to rest by moments of painful introspection. Read full review
80
TheWrapKatie WalshAug 26, 2022
Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut Funny Pages is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey. Read full review
80
IGNEsther ZuckermanAug 19, 2022
Funny Pages may be the most cringeworthy movie you'll see all year — and that's a good thing. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJordan MintzerMay 28, 2022
A fresh and uncompromising feature debut ... Kline has a true gift for portraiture, and it’s what makes this sad and scrappy portrait of the artist as a young cartoonist feel new and yet strangely familiar. Read full review
80
Total FilmNeil SmithMay 28, 2022
It has an unpredictability that keeps you on your toes and a bitter pathos that gives every laugh (of which there are many) a note of tragic despair. Read full review
76
PolygonJesse HassengerAug 26, 2022
Kline’s movie works best when it blurs the lines between the people of a nerdy subculture and the style of their obsessions. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyAug 26, 2022
This is Owen Kline's first feature, and he knows this world—the world of comic book obsessives and hopeful comics artists—very well. Nostalgia is probably at work in the film—somewhere—but it's buried under layers of grime and bitter disillusionment. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 25, 2022
The movie’s a little thin; it’s also on the glib side regarding what, in the case of Wallace’s condition, qualifies as something deeper than a crummy anti-social attitude. But Kline, shooting on film in collaboration with the excellent cinematographer Sean Price Williams, explores a wide range of visual expressivity in Funny Pages. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsAug 30, 2022
Owen Kline’s script is boisterous, funny, and very much committed to the bit. This is a movie about junior independence, after all, about a slightly full-of-himself young talent who’s journeying out on his own for the first time. So Kline makes sure the journey is memorable. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 28, 2022
The prickly protagonists of Funny Pages would not be pleasant company in real life, but writer-director Owen Kline’s proudly dyspeptic feature debut gives his characters a scruffy integrity that makes them perversely fascinating. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerAug 31, 2022
It's all deliberately grotesque, but comic readers will be pleasantly surprised at the degree of compassion for and comprehension of the culture Kline portrays. Read full review
67
The PlaylistCharles BramescoMay 28, 2022
A consistently funny yet narratively undercooked coming-of-age story. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 23, 2022
Kline presents us with a coming-of-age story, or an artist finding his voice tale, and never quite delivers either. Read full review
63
Washington PostMark JenkinsAug 22, 2022
This lack of generosity toward the supporting players is one of the movie’s major weaknesses. The other is that the episodic story leads to no significant discovery, either narrative or psychological. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreAug 26, 2022
A debut as packed with promise as with underdeveloped ideas. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 25, 2022
Funny Pages itself sometimes feels like an exercise in misplaced artistry, a student’s overly precocious stab at brutish cynicism. Its biggest laughs, which tend to go hand-in-hand with its meanest jolts, seem to arise less from any recognizable emotional or situational reality than from a filmmaker’s desire to shock and humiliate his characters, to put them repeatedly through the wringer. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 29, 2022
Funny Pages still feels slight and only vaguely shaped. Well-observed details are great, but they’ll only take you so far. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanJun 8, 2022
What is doesn’t have, oddly, is any sort of bone-deep reality factor. Almost nothing that happens in Funny Pages is particularly believable. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyAug 24, 2022
Whatever sense of obsession drives Robert’s art and whatever emotional freedom inspires Miles’s, neither is found in the cinematic aesthetic of “Funny Pages”; the movie is merely a conventional vessel for Kline’s ardent ideas, which pass through the cinema without leaving a trace. Read full review
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