Bisexuals don’t have the best track record on film. Whether it’s Sharon Stone’s manipulative and possibly murderous Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct or last year’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which basically rewrote Freddie Mercury’s history to punish him for spurning a monogamous relationship with a woman, they’re often portrayed as duplicitous at best and villains at worst. Into that long tradition steps the new film Funny Story and unfortunately, it does little to correct that history.
Written by Michael Gallagher and Steve Greene, and directed by the former, it follows Walter (Matthew Glave), the former star of a daytime fantasy show called Youngblood. After discovering the much younger girlfriend who broke up his marriage is pregnant, Walter decides to drive to Big Sur to break the news in person to his estranged daughter, Nic (Jana Winternitz).
Along for the ride is Nic’s friend Kim (Emily Bett Rickards), who is left stranded after her car breaks down as she leaves her mother’s funeral. Though they’re initially antagonistic, after a night of drinking and karaoke, the pair quickly fall in bed together and things get complicated when Walter realizes that not only is Kim Nic’s girlfriend, but they’re set to marry the next day. While Kim wants to forget the whole thing, Walter spends the rest of the film struggling with whether to tell the truth.
Though honesty is typically the best policy, Walter’s choice isn’t so clear here. First off, he’s not exactly the most reliable moral compass. When we first meet him, he’s trying to break it off with his girlfriend. As she vapes and takes selfies, he basically implies she’s an idiot by saying that his “obtuse” interests include things like books and “being an adult” while hers include fashion and reality television.
It’s unclear if the film knows just how much of an asshole Walter seems in that scene, but it doesn’t help his image that he later doesn’t feel bad about cheating on his girlfriend until he finds Kim crying in the bathroom the morning after. So, it’s hard to see Walter’s desire to reveal the truth to Nic as anything but more selfishness. When the friend he calls for help says, “Don’t make your daughter miserable just because you had the time of your life,” it’s hard to disagree, but it’s also undercut by the fact that friend spent the preceding minutes confessing how much he’d like to screw his daughter’s hot friends.
Still, while that scene sends some mixed messages, the biggest reason why it’s so difficult to tell what Walter should do is that Funny Story never really asks us to sympathize with Nic or especially Kim because it’s told from Walter’s perspective. From the beginning, it’s hard to understand Kim’s appeal. That’s not necessarily due to Rickards. With her tousled hair and playful physicality, it’s actually quite easy to understand why Nic and Walter would be so attracted to her. Rather, the problem with Kim is summed up by Walter himself: “You know, for someone so small, you wear a huge layer of bitch.” While that standoffishness makes sense in the context of her grief, it’s much harder to understand the way that grief manifests from scene to scene.
The morning after she sleeps with Walter, Kim is clearly guilty and sullen, so it feels like whiplash to suddenly see her so easily perform her affection for Nic in front of Walter. On one hand, the way she stares at Walter over Nic’s shoulder while Nic basically comes out could read as her begging him not to say anything. On the other, the seeming lack of guilt in that moment and the way she so easily carries on with Nic both in private and in front of Walter feels almost sociopathic. While some of the problem perhaps rests within the performance itself, it’s also because we never really learn as much about Kim or Nic as we should.
Though Kim refers to her father being angry about her dropping out of Berkley and notes that Nic couldn’t come to the funeral because Kim’s family would freak out, we don’t get a better understanding of who Kim is supposed to be. We never really understand what her grief has made her become. The first thing we see her do is smoke weed while driving and show up late to her mother’s funeral. We don’t know what she or Nic do for a living now and we don’t really know how they fell in love 18 months prior. Sure, they have great chemistry, but all we really know about Kim is that she doesn’t think before she acts. And while Rickards is great at playing Kim’s shifting personality from moment to moment, she simply can’t create much of a narrative through-line because the script itself seems to lack one.
Funny Story always had a difficult bar to clear in making sure it didn’t fall into biphobia. Unfortunately, despite an appealing cast, Gallagher’s film falls into old stereotypes because the script simply doesn’t dig into the characters or dynamics that it should. Rather than explore Kim and Nic’s resentment of their parents, the former’s grief or really, the love that seemed to heal so many of those wounds prior to Walter showing up, it’s the one guy in this situation whose struggle and redemption matters. Everyone may tell Walter that absolving his guilt is less important than hurting his daughter again, but not even the film really means it.
