My Movie Review: Paper Man
3/5
Opening Statement: Jeff Daniels stars as an author with writer's block after his first novel failed. Him and his wife, played by Lisa Kudrow, go out to live in the country where he meets a teenager girl played by Emma Stone. Meanwhile during Daniels' depressed state he is accompanied by an imaginary friend he's had since childhood called Captain Excellence (Ryan Reynolds.)
What's Good: As far as emotional involvement is concerned, I really cared about these highly dysfunctional characters. Both Emma Stone and Jeff Daniels have different imaginary friends for completely different reasons. Kieran Culkin plays Stone's imaginary friend, and he does it quite well. In fact, this whole cast was very impressive. Daniels, Kudrow, Stone, Reynolds. The best performance given to Stone. As you all know I am a sucker for the quirky dysfunctional dramedies. Well, I throughly enjoyed watching the interactions between these two damaged characters and how they helped each other through their depressed state-of-minds.
What's Bad: As far as dysfunctional character movies go, this can be put on the back burner. Toward the end of Paper Man it seemed they tried to hard to really hype up the "strange". The weirdness of their relationship was kind of odd, the use of imaginary friends to symbolize their own repressed emotions, was odd. Those were good odds, then you have the quirk such as building a couch out of copies of his failed novel. The quirk I think is what when a little too far and out of the original identity of the film. I enjoyed the emotions behind the dysfunction entirely, just not behind the quirk.
The Rant: Really not as bad as critics let on. I really do think Paper Man can be worth your time, these are very fun characters.
Consensus: 'Paper Man' feels a little unbalanced compared to other dysfunctional dramadies. However, the fantastic performances from the ensemble, and how they make you care for the characters is a work of art.
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