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🎙️ EPISODE 507: 07.11.22
There are flimsy elements here. Take the title, a loose reference to the fact that our protagonist young teens boys will immediately jump at the chance to leave the confines of their Catholic School to altar-boy funerals, thus missing the rest of the school day to fuck off. (Yeah, I just used "altar-boy" as a verb.) This isn't explored beyond the first act, but it hits tangentially and thematically when they have to decide to bury a dog they just accidentally shot, or hopelessly bring it to the vet. But the film is meant to feel loose like this and in that sense it captures the chaotic nature of a suburban adolescence near perfectly. I quite enjoyed this TRUE RANDOM selection; thank you GODS OF TRUE RANDOM.
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I think a main reason that this movie works is that its leads look and feel their age (14-year-olds approaching the dawn of high school). These are the great and highly specific moments in a young bro's life and they are as important as any story ever told. It made me think of the much tamer and far more mainstream
Superbad (2007) whose best buds pairing of Michael Cera and Jonah Hill were clearly playing down (age-wise) to their characters. In truth, this has more in common with a film like
Kids: these kids aren't as nearly as fucked and fucked up as those mid-90s New Yorkers, but that's also the point. There is a lingering morality behind the eyes of Charlie (Alex Maizus) and Andy (Dylan Hartigan); it always feel like they might be simply cosplaying these bad boys, trying on a self-destructive personality for size. The inclusion of the new kid David (Jordan Puzzo) as a child actor pulled from Hollywood after seeing his dad bang his 20-year-old co-star in a trailer on the set of a fake hit horror movie called
Bloody Knuckles works as the perfect foil/compulsorily moral compass, and also fodder for the best comedy...
Man, I love Dave...
This is a tightly written script by the McManus Brothers, whose only other feature credit is a 2021 sci-fi horror called
The Block Island Sound (on my watch list now!). Featuring the great Kevin Corrigan as a video rental store owner who moonlights as a small-time drug lord (in an all-too-small role),
Funeral Kings is funny and weirdly sweet. It captures that desire to be older than you are — a classic coming-of-age trope — far better than many more better-known pictures. I think it helps, in a way, that none of its performers are actors you've ever heard of, before or since. That fits in well with the theme: we're always trying to be somebody else, even if we don't know who that person is supposed to be.
And remember, when all else fails, just gets some more fucking egg rolls...
Funeral Kings is a 2012 film written and directed by Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus starring Dylan Hartigan and Alex Maizus and Kevin Corrigan. It was released on March 10, 2012.
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