![]() She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land but ultimately places her life – and her father’s crown – in jeopardy. The youngest of King Triton’s daughters and the most defiant, Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea and, while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. “The Little Mermaid” is the beloved story of Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. Meanwhile, Kline throws other oddballs in Robert's path, like a truly unnerving, screaming, opioid-addicted older woman who just happens to be portrayed by 1970s television star Louise Lasser. The other actors playing principal roles - both veterans like Maher and newcomers like Emanuel - similarly find ways to highlight their characters' weirdness without giving up their humanity. Zolghadri nails Robert's brand of nerdy confidence, while also finding the pitiable in him. He uses others as pawns in his own ambition - Wallace, yes, but also his friend Miles (Miles Emanuel), who also draws, but not at the expense of everything else in his life. Robert is often arrogant and cruel, a child of privilege who thinks he's a rebel. Zolghadri, who has appeared in Eighth Grade and Alex Strangelove, is in the unenviable position of playing a hero that you will probably want to punch in the face at least sometime throughout Funny Pages' 90 minutes. ![]() While Wallace is initially peeved by Robert's eager questions, he eventually sees an opportunity for himself, and starts to entertain the teen's desire to be taught the ways of an actual professional comic book artist. Robert's ears perk up, however, when he realizes that Wallace used to be a color separatist at Image Comics. There, he meets Wallace (Matthew Maher), a squirrely, anxious man facing potential jail time. To support himself, Robert gets a job as a stenographer for the public defender assigned to him when he's caught breaking into his dead teacher's apartment. After his beloved art teacher (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis) dies in a gruesome car accident that Robert witnesses, Robert tells his frustrated parents that he's quitting school, and moves out of their upper middle class home in Princeton for an illegal residence in Trenton that he shares with two older men. He has a job at a comic book store where he and the other employees turn their nose up at superhero fare in favor of the weird and overtly sexual. Robert is a talented if maybe a little too assured high schooler who wants to make drawing perverse comics his life’s work. If you can stand it, it's a brutal coming-of-age story about a kid's own snobbery coming to bite him in the ass. It's no surprise then that Funny Pages was produced by Uncut Gems' Josh and Benny Safdie, the kings of stressful cinema, and has the same quasi-voyeuristic, should-I-really-be-watching-this energy. Kline is probably still best known for his work on screen as the little brother of Jesse Eisenberg's character in Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, but Funny Pages establishes him as an excitingly grimy talent and a director who relishes in making his audiences and characters deeply uncomfortable.
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