Katio Hine

Paperboy Film Review

Attention-deficit disorder operates on a new level in Lee Daniels' latest film, The Paperboy, a dizzy medley of romance, comedy, crime, and drama. Daniels, best known for his work on Precious, lacks any kind of rein on this fragmented, jumpy film. The storyline is fairly simple, but in Daniels’s hands it seems like a chaotic compilation of scenes from four or five different films thrown together in random order to create the mess of a plotline that tells the story of The Paperboy.

Adapted from the Pete Dexter novel of the same name, The Paperboy stars Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron as Ward and Jack James, two brothers out to prove the innocence of Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a man on death row for slaughtering the local town sheriff. The film begins with the family’s former maid, Anita (Macy Gray), recounting the plot to an interviewer, although who this interviewer is or why he might be interviewing her is never explained. In her signature raspy tone, Gray takes us back to the sweltering swamps of Florida in 1969, where Ward is amidst digging into Hillary’s past with the help from his assistant Yardley (David Oyelowo), a debonair black Englishman whose skin color sparks controversy among the townspeople. As the characters are introduced and settled in, their eclectic, often misguided obsessions lead us into this film’s chaotic, perplexing storyline.

Van Wetter's pen-pal girlfriend Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) appears at the James’ doorstep, determined to help Ward’s team free her man from jail. Charlotte, an insecure, attention-seeking tart in her 30’s with a fetish for dirty letter exchange with prisoners, decides that Hillary is the love of her life. Likewise, when Jack meets Charlotte, he is immediately head-over-heels devoted to her. “As soon as he saw her, he fell in love,” Gray reveals, and that’s the only explanation we ever get.

Despite its promising premise, the storyline becomes overly saturated and drawn out just to fill time. At the start, the voiceover serves as a means to bind the story together, but as Kidman finally allows herself to be seduced by Efron, suddenly Macy Gray’s character starts talking to the audience rather than the interviewer. This, along with moments of random flashback and unprovoked fantasy, disconnects the audience by yanking them in and out of the flow of the film. As the story progresses, the original plotline is somewhat forgotten amid sex and scandal: it is never clear why Ward is so interested in the Van Wetter case, what makes Charlotte act the way she does or who actually killed the cop.

Aesthetically, Daniels is all over the place. While some of the film looks like a cheap soap opera, other scenes read like a Western murder mystery thriller. Some parts leave the audience in complete confusion, particularly in one unforgettable but completely irrelevant scene where Kidman’s character saves Efron from the effects of a life-threatening jellyfish sting. Upon noticing a limp, barely conscious Jack lying in the sand, Charlotte marches up to him, squats down, adjusts her bathing suit, and administers the antidote onto his swollen face.

What is so unsettling about this scene is that in Dexter’s novel, Jack is actually rescued by a group of nurses. In Daniels’ film, only Kidman is worthy of nursing Efron back to health: “If anyone is gon’ piss on that boy, it’s gon’ be me,” she hisses, shoving the other beachgoers aside. Other random twists and turns include gay interracial sado-masochist sex that results in Ward losing an eye, which does nothing to move the storyline forward, and Yardley revealing that he is not actually British but an American with a fake accent, which just makes no sense at all.

No criticism can be given to the cast, however, who all enthusiastically go above and beyond what is asked of them. In particular, Kidman’s total commitment to her trampy, over-the-top role is commendable. Unlike the regal, elegant image she frequently assumes, Charlotte is a sassy, untamed vixen who enjoys playing sexual mind games with dangerous men simply for her own entertainment. With a perfect mixture of precision and abandon, Kidman brilliantly portrays the vision of a self-destructive, oversexed Southern belle.

For all the acting talent and witty one-liners The Paperboy offers, it is nonetheless an extremely frustrating watch. The entire film is a mess, full of unfinished plot curves, futile visual gimmickry and scattered narration. The ending is much too rushed and there are a too many scenes that try to be taken seriously but end up failing miserably. This is a story that invites us to care about injustice, about coming-of-age struggles and about important social issues, but the fact that the script doesn’t really allow us to care about any of the characters is a major flaw, regardless of how fantastic some of the performances are.

Unfortunately, The Paperboy is a tale of a director getting in the way of promising film material with his muddled artistic agenda. Despite its star-studded lineup of actors, The Paperboy is full of distractions that blur the entire storyline and its underlying themes, ultimately leaving the audience underwhelmed and confused.

Cast and Credits:

John Cusack, Zac Efron, Macy Gray, Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey

Benaroya Pictures, Lee Daniels Entertainment, and Millennium Films present film directed by Lee Daniels. Adapted from the novel by Pete Dexter. Running time: 107 minutes.