"Say you're, like, a fallen woman, is it too late to become a nun?" This unlikely pickup line comes tumbling out of the mouth of one of the screen's most improbable romantic heroines. In Funny Ha Ha, playing the Red Vic Movie House Aug. 12-18, first-time writer/director Andrew Bujalski achieves a kind of emotional cross-dressing by having us experience the post-college frustrations that normally befall an uber-nerdy guy through the eyes of a young woman.
Marnie is 23 when we first meet her. In the weeks leading up to her 24 birthday, she will pass through a series of bad temp jobs, be denied her first tattoo, be rejected by the guy of her dreams, get drunkenly kissed by several mister wrongs, clumsily wooed by a nerdy guy she casually humiliates in a one-on-one basketball shootout, and finally and totally unexpectedly, wake up to find herself in control of her life. A thoroughly hetero zone (except for a slyly executed scene of male-on-male lap-sitting), Funny Ha Ha is dead-on accurate at capturing all the embarrassing moments that litter the world of first dates and bad temp jobs.
The film's greatest asset is a non-professional cast that is pitch-perfect at firing those dreadful synapses that cause some people to act crazy in the presence of certain other people. Newcomer Kate Dollenmayer (her other major credit derives from a stint as an animator on Richard Linklater's Waking Life) totally rules. From the opening scene where she looks likes she's on lithium, Dollenmayer smoothly shifts gears until, by the time her Marnie reaches the once-dreaded b-day, she no loner has boys on the brain 24/7.
The boy who gets away in the first act is Alex, a handsome, somewhat skittish computer programmer who competes with Marnie to see who gets to be the film's Annie Hall. The scenes between Dollenmayer and Christian Rudder's Alex runneth over with nervous body language: he plays with his hair, she stammers and makes bad jokes, and they both avoid eye-contact. While they are clearly the film's romantic leads, they never actually exchange as much as a peck on the cheek. But don't be fooled into thinking that Marnie and Alex are just friends. Rather, this non-couple resembles a little-remarked-upon niche of gaydom where a queer boy is hooked on a straight one who isn't exactly not interested. Such a romantic double-negative can continue for long stretches, not coupling up yet not splitting up. Early in the film, Alex does something totally outrageous that leaves Marnie utterly confused, yet provides the basis for whatever relationship they will have.
Funny Ha Ha plays like a Judd Aptow sitcom, if the creator of Freaks and Geeks got his lovable losers to grad school.
Temp boy
Director Bujalski himself creates a painfully accurate portrait of a geeky temp boy, Mitchell. Badly in need of a Clay Aiken-style makeover, Mitchell is also bad at chess, basketball and first-date small talk. But then, Marnie makes it perfectly clear that their night out isn't really a date.
Bujalski's characters never quite do what's expected of them. Take Dave. First-time actor Myles Paige turns Dave into an almost jazz-like riff of conflicting impulses: in a solid relationship with Rachel, Dave furtively kisses Marnie in her car, encourages a long-haired boy named Jeff to sit on his lap, and urges Marnie to pursue the fickle Alex. Life is full of guys like Dave, and so are the best movies.
Running through Funny Ha Ha is the outmoded social code that still dictates the behavior of boys: the code that prohibits Dave or Jeff from appearing to enjoy their lap-sitting, that insists that Mitchell defy the inexorable laws of social Darwinism and make an abject ass of himself in pursuit of Marnie, and that inspires Marnie and Alex to taunt two young man in the park
Writer/director Bujalski, who fittingly enough studied film at Harvard, which lacks a film school, acknowledges that his brilliant cast did some scenes exactly as written, while others benefited from the serendipity of the kind of improvisation that might turn seasoned films actors green with envy.
The film's finale finds Marnie and Alex being casually cruel to a couple of young Frisbee-players, the bratty repartee cutting to the core of this offbeat comedy's mix of social humiliation, genuine wit, and scenes whose thrust is just really peculiar. Although there are underlying sexual sparks between them, Marnie and Alex act out an awkward social dance that appears more sibling rivalry than romantic coupling. Typical of their exchange is Marnie's ability to take a kind of slacker-male approach to the ridicule game.
"Every time I come here, it's these same two guys playing Frisbee."
"The same two dorks."
"Yeah! Well, I'm sure they're nice guys, but..."
"Yeah, some nice dorks."
"Yeah, they're clearly dorks."
Alex yells to the Frisbee players: "Dorks! Sorry, I was talking to her."
"He was just talking to me. Ignore him."
"Sorry. I didn't think he'd turn around.""
"Of course he turned around. You yelled out, 'Dorks!'"
"Yeah, but you don't want to like, be like, yeah, that's me, you know. Like someone calls out like, 'Dick weed' at a party, you don't turn around, cause you're like, you gotta play it cool."
"Yeah."
"It's self-identification."
"You're right, you're right."
"You forgot to play it cool."
"Kind of uncool of me."
"You know, they deserved it.
"Yeah. Well, listen, I'm sorry. I know I can be really exasperating."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you know, people tell me that I'm a hard person to deal with sometimes, you know what I mean."
"No. You know, you don't have to, whatever, I mean, here we are, it's a beautiful day, beautiful sandwiches. Let's just enjoy our unobstructed view of these fucking dorks!"
"They definitely did not hear you."
"Maybe. But maybe it's that dick-weed factor you mentioned earlier."
Populated by a beguiling ensemble of "dorks and dickweeds," grownup kids who may never outgrow the T-shirts and bad haircuts that saw them through grad school, Funny Ha Ha is a cult film still looking for its cult members.