People who hate this film are boring. It is a blast. It reminds me of a Stones song. "Live with Me," perhaps, or "Rip This Joint." As with the Stones, it is artificial to a certain extent, in love with a heightened pop-culture idea of the South more than the real place, but in such an enticing, intoxicating way. It is infused with the blues and fried gator and sex and sweat and violence. It turns these elements into a unique and vulgar pulp fantasia. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by way of Wild at Heart, the film is an R-rated Southern Gothic Saturday morning cartoon and, I daresay, an instant cult favorite. The performances are top-notch, though the obvious standout is an energized and voracious Nicole Kidman. Lee Daniels' direction is absurd and confrontational and stylized with a capital s, but this suits the material. There is another universe where this is an earnest, safe, more streamlined film, a suspenseful variation on The Help, but I am glad to be living in this one.

A-

This was either awesomely awful or awfully awesome. Regardless, I loved it. Pulpy and trashy beyond belief and Zac Efron in underwear for 75% of the fim is good by me.

Longer review:

I sort of knew I was getting into before seeing The Paperboy. I knew about the peeing, I'd scoured over pictures of Zac Efron in his underwear and Nicole Kidman channeling Ann-Margret meets Endora from Bewitched.

I'm not sure if it actually prepared me for how pulpy and trashy (and ultimately funny) this was. From the way it's shot, super grainy and saturated and looking like 70s/80s porn, to the wide range of accents (and attempts at accents, I'm looking at you, L'Efron), The Paperboy is a great attempt at campy greatness that ultimately fails almost everywhere.

Not that that's a bad thing. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, it's a riot. Macy Gray actually manages to escape with the most....dignity? Her role and her voiceover ("It's weird for me to be talkin' why y'all are watchin' this") is good and definitely needed. And yes, Zac Efron in his underwear for 75% of a movie is never a bad thing. But when did John Cusack turn into such a terrible actor? Has this been a thing? So sad. This also provides a strange file into the year of Matthew McConaughey's films. One thing I always like about McConaughey is that he's always in every role, you never lose him. He doesn't need to transform or use a wacky accent, he just kind of melts into his characters and they seem lived in. Let's talk about Kidman for a moment. Now she is someone who also I can always see in every role and for her, that's not always a good thing. Here, I can always see her trying. I can hear her working that accent to its last y'all but it's never quite convincing. She looks like she's playing dress up most of the time. And between her height, her hair and the pounds of make up she wears in this she sort of resembled Willam from RuPaul's Drag Race for most of the film.

Daniels, and co-writer/novelist Pete Dexter cram every possible thing they can in here; murder, southern-fried racism, swamps, secret homosexuality, extreme S&M, swamps, non-physical full release sex (which totally reminded me of Barbarella), swamps, alligators and all wrapped up like it's Tennessee Williams dressed up as John Waters. It actually reminded of the kind of movies John Waters made in the 70s but without the actual rawness, the bareness of production. Everything in this is so meticulously and carefully there. And what separates it from being real camp (and a good movie) is that it when it should be funny it takes itself seriously and when it's serious it's a laugh riot. Daniels has never been in great control of tone for his movies, he's just not that good of a film maker (yet).

STILL, after all of that, I liked this. It's NOT a good movie. It IS a good time. Intentional or otherwise.

The Paperboy

I don't think Lee Daniels knows how to cut a movie. Many of the scenes were claustrophobicly shot and the movie was just shoddily made. The plot is kind of uninteresting and it doesn't engage you until about half away through by which point you've fallen asleep or lost interest. The performances, though, are good. Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, and surprisingly John Cusack, and even more suprisingly Macy Gray, are so good that it's kind of a shame that they performed in such a stinker of a movie.

McConaughey again plays either a lawyer or a man investigating a case, and it's set in the South, and I just hate the southern accent. But I did enjoy the scenes of racism throughout.

D-

I guess I'm boring then, David.

I am afraid so, yes. Because The Paperboy is awesome sleaze.

Oh boy, this movie...

To me it is the definition of "there's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing right with it either". But it does also have an exogenous value since the friend I saw this in the theaters with loathes it, and I need only bring up the film to get some epic ranting.

Meh. It's not very good.

5/10 ( C )

The actors are game, but Lee Daniels pretty much torpedoes it.

½* (D-)

It's a really terrible and atonal film, but I enjoyed the heck out of it, particularly the performances from Kidman (who has quietly been putting out excellent work in recent years) and the hilariously miscast John Cusack. So I think David and Algren are both right.