Paper Heart, 2009
Dir. Nicholas Jasenovic"We’re not a very patient society so if something goes wrong, and there’s no quick fix, they give up. If you can hang in there, it just gets better."
Paper Heart is a Charlene Yi's mockumentary about finding love, as she believes (which is doubtful, and conceived strictly for sake of plot) that love doesn't exist, or in a smaller way she doesn't know what love is. So she sets out on a quest all around the world to find out what love is and if she herself can ever experience it. Slowly Michael Cera (also playing himself) works his way into the plot and a budding romance starts to form between the two.
What follows is a largely uneven movie, that asks several great questions without answering a single one of them. It adds up to a disappointing and annoying indie film that never really does anything new or interesting. This could be due to several reasons, which I'm well about to go into in full detail over.
Charlene Yi should not be a leading lady, in any film, ever, and Paper Heart is resounding proof of it. She's not charismatic, charming, likeable and often feels very contempt with simply slurring off her lines in an unintelligible mumble. If you can actually stomach watching her for ninety-minutes, you might enjoy the film, and there's emphasis on "might". This is easily one of the biggest flaws in the film as she is essential to ground the film. We're supposed to care about her plight and journey, something that I lost interest in, twenty minutes or so into the film. She is playing the same character she played in Knocked Up, but instead of a few minutes of screen-time we're treated to her "presence" for an entire film.
The second biggest flaw here is that the love story between Michael Cera and Charlene Yi (which was made up for the movie) was awkward, irritating, and seemed incredibly staged. Worse, the two leads had no chemistry at all (which is troubling considering the two actually dated in real life for 3 years). The lack of chemistry and the falseness that resonates throughout this relationship is even more focalized when it's placed next to the interviews of real couples who ARE in love and come off more genuine than either of the leads. In fact, the interviews are the only redeeming parts in Paper Heart.
To say I was disappointed by Paper Heart would be a vast understatement. I was borderline offended, and thirty minutes into the film I was ready to be done with it. Fans of Charlene Yi and Michael Cera will probably enjoy this, along with hopeless romantics who can get past Yi's slow and stoner-like delivery, which try as might, I couldn't. Paper Heart occasionally works as an interesting series of interviews, but as a film it falls flat on it's face. It's unfocused, lead by unlikeable leads, lacking any chemistry or charm, and above all, it's boring. I can easily recommend that most everyone should just skip this film, if you can call it that.
1 out of 5
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