Goofy-cute people conducting profoundly casual conversations: Funny Ha Ha photo: Goodbye Cruel Releasing Funny Ha Ha Written and directed by Andrew Bujalski Opens April 29, Cinema Village Related: Talking With Funny Ha Ha Writer-Director Andrew Bujalski by Joshua Land more film most popular most commented Kabluey Tracking Shots by Jim Ridley Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic by McCann, Ruth Diminished Capacity Tracking Shots by Nick Pinkerton Holding Trevor Tracking Shots by Julia Wallace We Are Together Tracking Shots by Ella Taylor Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (15) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

Funny Ha Ha proceeds in slackerly fits and starts: Marnie drifts between numbing temp jobs and mulls over romantic prospects that are either undesirable or unobtainable. A long-harbored, not-so-secret crush on college pal Alex (Christian Rudder of the Brooklyn band Bishop Allen) flares up when he splits with his girlfriend. A flurry of brutally inept matchmaking within their circle of mutual acquaintances culminates in an excruciating phone call (later topped by a painful encounter at the neighborhood supermarket). Meanwhile, in a luckless role reversal, Marnie is pursued by Mitchell (Bujalski), a dorky co-worker who makes his move with the conversation stopper "So, like, what's your deal?"

Shot on 16mm in an unassuming pseudo-vérité, Funny Ha Ha is less offhand than it first appears. (The grainy, gangly naturalism and an early rave from critic and Cassavetes expert Ray Carney have prompted a string of somewhat misleading comparisons with the forefather of American independent film.) A movie full of goofy-cute people conducting profoundly casual and casually profound conversations littered with dangling sentences and pockets of dead air, it's seemingly designed to elicit a collective c'est moi from twentysomething hipster enclaves across the country. But Bujalski doesn't just reproduce the halting, roundabout patterns of actual talk—he has a keen ear for the defensive and passive-aggressive uses of inarticulate speech.

Alex's evasiveness has a lot to do with his selfish desire to preserve the status quo—he's in a position to enjoy his ambiguously flirtatious rapport with Marnie more than she is. Mitchell, perhaps strategically, alternates fumbling shyness with obnoxious bluntness. And Marnie, especially in dealing with Mitchell, conceals her more manipulative impulses behind a convenient air of eccentric distraction. Churning up mixed messages and conflicting intentions, Bujalski keeps the mood deftly poised between funny and sad. At her lowest, Marnie composes a to-do list, complete with little check boxes, which includes "learn to play chess?" and "fitness initiative!!" In the next scene, she's enlisted the gauche Mitchell to help out—though the leisurely afternoon of basketball and board games turns sour in elaborately queasy ways.

Structured around nonevent and inaction, Funny Ha Ha recalls Jamie Thraves's 2000 British indie The Low Down, a neglected mini-masterpiece of quarter-life malaise. Bujalski's film likewise thrums with ambivalent dread—underlying the characters' inert indecision is a reluctance to let the rest of their lives begin, not least for fear that it might prove an undifferentiated haze. The final scene is as close to perfection as any Amerindie has come in recent memory—in a single reaction of Marnie's, we see a small but definite shift in perspective; abruptly, Bujalski stops the film, as if there's nothing more to say. It's a wonderful parting shot for a movie that locates the momentous in the mundane.