Paper Heart Review

Saturday, January 16, 2010

So I promised a Paper Heart review a little ways back... here it is.

Paper Heart is a film about relationships and love.  It's done in a documentary style format, so you'd almost believe it was just that.  Charlyne Yi, playing "herself", travels across the country interviewing people and getting their thoughts on love, relationships and expressing her innability to find it herself.  Charlyne Yi is quirky and some of the interactions she has kind of make you cringe, sort of like watching early episodes of The Office.  

Charlyne ultimately ends up at a party, interviewing people and runs into Micharl Cera (Super bad), who is also playing "himself".  The two hit it off, in an awkward way.  I don't want to say too much more, but this "documentary" follows Charlyne as she continues her crusade across the country, and is sometimes joined by Cera.

There are parts of this film that are amusing, and some of the way it was crafted (litterally in one sense as Charlyne puts these crazy scenes together using paper puppets and backgrounds - these are probably the best part of the film)... a lot of the film is awkward andit can be slow.  I'm not completely surprised as that seems to be the case with a lot of the movies Michael Cera is in - he plays the gawky, awkward kid... it's not a stretch to imagine he's probably a lot like that in real life.

I would have to give this film a C+ overall -  An A- for some of the creative scenes they put together (the ending is fun).  Cinematography is probably somewhere around a C or C+ - not BAD, just pretty average.  That may not be entirely fair since it's filmed partly as a documentary, so naturally the film angles/work are going to be in that style. 

One week exactly from this moment I'll be drinking a beer.  The only difference between that and today is next week I'll be doing it in Utah.  Woot!