"Paper Boys, The Movie:" A review

On the recommendation of a friend, I took a date to see the premier of this low-budget indie here in Atlanta. The film was called "Paper Boys." My expectations were already low after reading the filmmakers' "manifesto" of the film on its official site. I expected some sort of synopsis of the film, but instead I got this:

“Paper Boys” is a coming-of-age film in the strictest sense but more; it is an exploration of a microcosm of young door-to-door newspaper salesmen who are closer than most families in many regards. A truly ensemble piece, the film revolves around a common problem for teens which most often feels unique but isn’t, dysfunctional, non-traditional family. Add to this violence, psychological abuse, confusion over sexuality and a fierce awareness of one’s own economic standing, the main character turns to drugs and finds himself in a tailspin while his friends have no idea how to handle it.

False bravado and hyper-sexuality amplified by drugs and painful circumstances, gives us a recipe for a rich juxtaposition of comedy and potential tragedy. The soundtrack creates a relentless ride which leaves one emotionally exhausted from laughter and tears.

Um, what does this even mean? Trust me, everybody may have been "exhausted" by the time this thing was over, but it wasn't emotional. And nobody was moved to either laughter or tears, though I witnessed a number of people move from their seats to the exit less than half-way through.

My expectations were also heavily tempered by the trailer, which is terrible in and of itself, and which you can find here.

Basically, Paper Boys is a series of excruciatingly long and drawn-out scenes of a group of moronic, unlikeable douche bags saying uninteresting, "getting dumber as I listen" things to one another for what seems like 4 hours. Imagine the biggest idiots you know. Now imagine you are forced to follow these guys around for several days. Now imagine that the dumb shit these guys say in an attempt to sound smart is backed by some film-score-sounding sentimentalist music to add a sense of importance or drama to what they say. That's Paper Boys.

The movie is apparently supposed to be about a group of guys who sell newspaper subscriptions door-to-door around the Atlanta area. A group of high school kids knock on doors and sell the papers. A group of slightly older idiots (who, I guess, do this for a living?) organize the high school boys into troupes who are pitted against each other for the most sales. Its all a big homoerotic bonding experience, as the filmmaker spends plenty of time on gratuitous shots of large groups of sweaty high-school boys piling into cars together, grabbing their crotches, and mentioning how they think they might be gay. I noticed that a lot of these young men came to the premier with their parents, and several left early. I have a feeling that maybe their parents didn't realize they had signed their sons up to appear in this thinly-veiled soft core gay porno film. Sorry mom and dad!

The main conflict involves this one kid who went into drug rehab and met a girl there who killed herself. He's "haunted" by this, or whatever, apparently. His dad was abusive. And he has some African-American blood in him, and this apparently causes him to have low self-esteem. (A fact we learn in a conversation that begins, "You know how Steve and I are always joking that I'm black in all the right places? Well, its true.") So, yeah, he does some drugs and gets depressed a fakes a suicide in the end. Why, its really not clear. The whole thing is really stupid. The whole thing seems like it was written and shot by a kid in high-school who watches too much MTV reality shows and fashions his own basis sensations of angst and confusion as something profound and film-worthy. Thing is, actually put it on film and show it to an audience, and it becomes apparent that these sensations are not, in fact, extraordinary or interesting or film-worthy in the least.

Beyond the stupidness of the plot, the writing was capital-t Terrible. One guy keeps saying he's invisible for no reason. One guy dumbly quotes Shakespeare in moments where we are clearly supposed to be impressed by the literary reference. The characters deliver one bad cock-and-sex joke after another, none of them funny, not even in a "so offensive its funny" kind of way.  They sound like junior high kids trying to come up with dirty things to say, and, yeah, they're "dirty," but not clever or shocking or anything else to elicit a reaction other than "get me out of here." We are left with no sense that any character is likable or even amusing or interesting in any way. 

The main character is among the worse of the actors (he's the one whose addicted to drugs). He delivers every line in a completely flat monotone, so his "sad," "doped up," "happy," "pensive," etc. moments all come across as exactly the same emotion. There are very few female cast, and when they do appear, its in a lowest-common-denominator "hot slutty chick" kind of role, something for one of the male characters to ogle or have sex with ("no means yes, yes means anal" says one paperboy to another, in reference to his perfectly nice date; a 30-something Asian stripper with a tattoo welcomes one door-to-door salesman into her house, with a "daddy's not home" gesture, following which the salesman high-fives the air or something). 

This movie was so bad. You could feel it in the audience too. Nobody laughed ever, even at lines and scenes that were clearly intended to be funny. People left. It was like we were all just sitting there while a stream of cliches and non-sequiturs, packaged as a "heartrending coming-of-age story" or something, slithered out of the screen onto our unsuspecting faces. The whole thing kind of makes me sad, actually. Clearly, a lot of people put a lot of time and effort into this thing. The lesson here is that no amount of money, time, or effort can make up for lame fundamentals: without a solid idea, solid writing, and solid acting, you end up with a shit sandwich like Paper Boys: The Movie.