Mockumentary starring young comedienne Charlyne Yi (the really stoned girl in Knocked Up) and her quest to find the truth about love.
Carlyne doesn't believe in love, and her own experiences have turned her into yet another modern-day skeptic. She embarks on a quest across America to make a pseudo documentary about this subject she doesn’t understand. She talks with friends and strangers, scientists, bikers, romance novelists, and children. Then, shortly after filming begins, Charlyne meets a boy after her own heart: the mighty Michael Cera (tv's Arrested Development, Superbad). As their relationship develops on camera, her pursuit to discover the nature of love takes on a fresh new urgency.
I apologise, we feel bad, but there's no trailer available. ~Ed.
The notion of a pseudo-mockumentary about musician/comedian Charlyne Yi (from Knocked Up) investigating the idea of love who then falls for actor Michael Cera (Yi’s real-life ex-boyfriend, playing himself) failed to ignite my cinematic passions. It sounded self-regarding, self-promoting and worst of all, pointless. Hollywood hipster posturing at its worst.
But I was being needlessly cynical. This isn’t a profound film by any stretch of the imagination, but it offers up some harmlessly cute observations and a few funny moments. Yi’s diminutive, decidedly non-cinematic presence and halting delivery makes her impossible to dislike, despite the apparent calculation behind her coyness. Cera is his typical deadpan self, a little more reserved than usual maybe.
Although Yi states at the beginning she doesn’t believe in love, the film is aggressively romantic from the get-go, massaging its homespun talking-head sound bites with lilting indie music and low-fi would-be Gondry-esque puppetry.
As the documentary aspects of the film give way to the narrative parts, it’s hard to truly invest in the “love” story unfolding. Determining the exact level of artifice never stops being distracting (there’s an actor credited with playing the director of the film), and the emotional climax is far from earned. But the film rarely sinks below quite interesting, if only for the fun of playing ‘spot the Apatow actor in the background’.
By Dominic Corry, Flicks.co.nz
A quasi-documentary about love that is sweet, true and perhaps a little deceptive.
Adorable. Ad-or-able. It will melt even the coldest heart.
A "hybrid documentary" that bemusedly blurs the line between fact and fiction.
At best, they entertain in a "people say the darndest things" kind of way. But they do support the notion that people still fall in love and find a way to make it work for a lifetime, which is about as happy an ending as you could wish for.
Your enjoyment of Paper Heart will hinge almost entirely on your receptiveness to Ms. Yi and the extreme iteration of social awkwardness she represents.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 20th May 2010.
Release date: May 20th 2010.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
