Funny Ha Ha

21.03.2007 | 29 Kommentare | cleo

Written, directed and co-starring Andrew Bujalski, co-author and main character Kate Dollenmayer.

Made on a minuscule budget, Funny Ha Ha consists of a cast and crew of friends of the director. It captures that agonising moment when young people are plunged into adulthood.

Main character Marnie played by a delightful Kate Dollenmayer in a lovely, slightly melancholy performance, is in a quiet crisis as she slams head-on into a giant question mark about what comes after finishing education. She has an unrequited crush on a friend who decides to let her down in an unbearably gauche phone conversation. Dumped even before a relationship has started, Marnie turns to a programme of self-improvement and a couple of doomed dates with Mitchell (Bujalski) who, being lovesick and clueless, negotiates the minefield of wooing a girl who “just wants to be friends” with such ill-judged persistence that she practically has to forcibly evict him from her grounds.

The picture has comedy mileage in crippling embarrassment and anxiety. It contains moments of insight in a sea of dead air and uncomfortable, pained silences, punctuated with “ums” and “errs” but then will floor you with the kind of throwaway articulacy.
Being refreshingly unpolished with completely persuasive dialogues, the smart, unassuming picture has a nervy intelligence and an awkward appeal.

Bujalski’s combination of articulate awkwardness and nerdish cool make him an architect of angst who can magnify the minute humiliations of daily life into a witty, perceptive and painfully honest drama.