PAPER HEART (2009)
This movie is a little hard to pin down. It’s shot like a “documentary” following Charlyne Yi, who embarks on a journey to get people’s thoughts on love. She claims to not believe in love herself, and that kinda checks out for a while in this thing. Then of course Michael Cera shows up (with a SCOTT PILGRIM-ish personality) and kinda jacks that whole situation up. It’s officially marketed as an indie drama, romance with some comedy.
Everyone in this movie is just playing themselves I guess, but it is difficult to tell if Cera really falls in love with Yi during filming? Or if the entire movie is just kinda sketched out on a napkin, and everyone involved is just going with it. It’s kind of like the romance version of BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, only everyone seems to mostly be cool with the experiment. For those reasons, the movie is actually surprisingly effective. It never really tells you, that it’s a straight up movie just being “shot” as if it were a documentary.
As Charlyne travels the country, she does these interviews which comes across as not only authentic, but quite wonderful in their sincerity. This aspect really adds to the film. She isn’t sitting them down in some integration room. The interviews are out in the open, sometimes outside, and they are really charming overall.
For me what made this movie far more interesting is the “paper” part of the title. Some of the “stories” being told in the interviews, are acted out using stop motion paper crafts. It’s just a really awesome element to this thing that kind of makes it standout. The final “paper story” being the most fun and creative of them all. I do understand how some viewers might feel cheated or tricked regarding the presentation. This film won’t be for everyone and probably isn’t as theologically deep as some might like, but the simplicity and almost innocence of the journey is commendable.
For it’s often heartfelt attempts at getting to the bottom of things, and it’s really intriguing “paper story” stop motion thrown in. I give this a 4 out of 7. It’s a movie I not only own, but will be watching again.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF OVERTURE FILMS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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