SunnyHello Nice effects though.

HomeyTao For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Steve Pulaski Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha was not only the directorial debut of the man himself, who seems destined for more sufficient projects, but was also the pioneering film for the proclaimed "mumblecore movement." Mumblecore is defined by a film that has an ultra-low budget, very cheap production values, is shot on an inexpensive camera, utilizes usually first-time talents, and has a script that is or either mirrors improvisation. Faithful readers will note that I'm a big fan of the genre and recently strolled through the colorfully articulate filmography of the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark. I thought I knew mumblecore, but it turns out, I hadn't paid a visit to the godfather of the genre, Bujalski.The film follows a directionless girl named Marnie (Katie Dollenmayer), a recent college-grad in her twenties lumbering around the bitter streets of Boston, looking for a stable job and steady companionship. She is looking for stability in a world where everything is wobbly and unbalanced. While she is desperately trying to keep her life on the mature track, she winds up frequenting parties, hanging out with loser friends, and drinking an unbelievable amount. This is the sole reason why she doesn't carry a particularly close relationship with any of her friends in the film and this becomes the film's primary focus throughout this ninety minute journey.A film only ninety minutes in length only feels like a journey when it is equipped with methodical pacing and conservative energy. I was instantly reminded of Richard Linklater's lovably different film Slacker, which was his directorial debut in 1991. Slacker was an experimental film that lacked form, much like this picture, and was a simple day-in-the-life examination of not characters but a college town in Texas. The camera would focus on a specific person, have them ramble to a friend or a regular pedestrian for a few minutes, before completely panning over to someone different in the same location. It was a soothing and effective picture that worked not only because of its ingenious idea, but because of its approach, which was careful never to ostracize these characters as empty caricatures but showing people that a "slacker" is someone who knows what they want to do and how they want to do it and that they refuse to conform to things that will not better them in the slightest. The more I think about it, the more I'm truly wowed and captivated by that film.Funny Ha Ha, unfortunately, takes a more vacuous and shallow approach to the subject of impressionable collegians. While we are not burdened with these characters or even find them intolerable in the slightest, we don't particularly find them as interesting nor good people to focus on for ninety minutes. Characters disappear and reappear in a form of complete randomness, dialog is exchanged sometimes meaningfully, unpredictably, and haphazardly, and more often than not, these people have really no insights worth exploring or thoughts worth hearing. Linklater's Slacker was a carefully constructed film; one that made sure its characters weren't empty or vacant of personalities, even though we only saw them for such a brief amount of time. I'll never know how, but Linklater managed to almost develop one person in a time frame of less than five minutes and some films don't seem to develop the main character in the frame of ninety minutes or more.If the characters, particularly Marnie, had observant little things to say about the world, pleasant insights, or even witty parables with whimsy and craft, we'd have something going here. But she doesn't. And neither do the other characters. The one I would've liked to see more of was Bujalski's Mitchell, who appears rather late in the picture. He seems to have both acting and directing under his belt, and I can see him making a film I'll label "brilliant" in "x" number of years.The film is shot on 16mm, fully equipped with scratchy and somewhat distorted audio and actors that perfectly define the word "amateur." This works in the film's favor, because it doesn't seem to fall prey to conventions in any way. What doesn't is the film's script, which seems stuck in a trance where nothing happens almost because someone is eerily afraid of progression.Starring: Kate Dollenmayer, Mark Herlehy, Christian Rudder, Jennifer L. Schaper, Myles Paige, Marshall Lewy, and Andrew Bujalski. Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.

scrybbler This seemed to be just the kind of movie I enjoy, but turned out to be a shell of the same.The director gets some things right, like his choice of star and some of the scene pacing. Dialog and character interactions breathe properly; they're languid and yet vaporous, as some other reviewers have said.Too bad they all come to nothing. Marnie's a vacuous amalgam, not a character; she's the camera, not a human being. Encounters and relationships don't build through sequence or consequence; almost nothing happens that informs or affects a subsequent scene. Through her, we see the other characters, who are almost universally portrayed by much lesser actors. There's no character arc; the script feels self-indulgent and ultimately trivial. The entire movie is Marnie amused, Marnie bemused, Marnie bored... audience bored.Bujalski had the pieces to make a remarkable film, but instead he never got the transmission out of neutral.

foibonhomme It's interesting to see how polarizing this film is. I think Bujalski is one of the most important filmmakers we have around. And I can't wait to see what he does next.To one of the bravest, most talented, most original guys at work. Keep it up.It's guys like Bujalski that I feel are pushing the medium forward and challenging us to think about and look at film in different ways. I'll take FUNNY HA HA over most things any day.I think one day people will go back and FUNNY HA HA will be considered a classic.

Roland E. Zwick First time filmmaker Andrew Bujalski's extremely low-budget feature "Funny Ha Ha" has many of the hallmarks of an early John Cassavetes film: grainy camera-work, minimalist storytelling, and naturalistic, ad lib performances. Bujalski's cast of characters is made up entirely of white urban youth in their early to mid 20's - that awkward period in life after an individual has finished college yet before he has moved on to building his own career and family. Given what appears to be their first real taste of freedom and independence, the characters do little but sit around, get drunk, and talk about their romantic relationships, but Bujalski observes all this without hysteria and judgment, thereby lending the film the aura of real life being caught on film. The focal point is an attractive young woman named Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer) who drinks a bit too much, seems vaguely directionless and lacking in energy, and is somewhat inexperienced in the ways of love, but who, nevertheless, seems reasonably well grounded and knows her own limits as a person. "Funny Ha Ha," despite its occasional raggedness and self-indulgence, is blessedly free of contrivance and melodramatics. These may not be the most goal-oriented or socially-conscious youth we've ever encountered in the movies, but neither are they the most troubled or self-destructive. They seem like pretty ordinary kids living in the moment and only vaguely aware that there's a world outside of themselves that they are destined to become a part of in the very near future.The beauty of the dialogue rests in its ability to capture with uncanny accuracy the way people in the real world actually speak. The characters interact in ways that are genuine and believable, and life just seems to be unfolding as we watch it on screen. This is due in small measure to the fine performances from a cast of virtual unknowns who know how to appear relaxed, honest and natural in front of the camera. With its improvisational and off-the-cuff film-making style and its abrupt, the-camera-just-ran-out-of-film ending, "Funny Ha Ha" makes us feel as if we are eavesdropping on the daily lives of a handful of relative strangers. Lucky for us, they turn out to be people in whom we can see something of ourselves reflected, and with whom we enjoy spending our time.