Funny Ha-Ha
Screening on Film
With Kate Dollenmayer, Christian Rudder.
US, 2002, 16mm, color, 90 min.
Filmed in and around the streets of Allston-Brighton and featuring a cast and crew of Harvard grads, Andrew Bujalski’s debut feature provides an insightful look at contemporary relationships that fall outside the sugary optimism of Hollywood romance. Marnie is a twenty-three-year-old office temp struggling to maintain her dignity and sense of humor amidst mundane tasks at work, for which she is clearly overqualified, and several ill-advised romantic situations. Among her potential suitors are an ex-flame who can’t seem to let go, her best friend’s boyfriend, and a co-worker who always manages to say the wrong thing. Bujalski moves his cadre of characters beyond the guarded wisecracking of so many young indies and pushes them toward a more vulnerable, and sometimes painful, truthfulness.