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Massawyrm trips on a hole in a PAPER HEART and falls in love with Charlyne Yi!!
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Long ago I abandoned pretty much any and all interest in Mockumentaries. Once upon a time they were clever and fresh – but after a while they wore thin. They were too cheap and easy to produce, so we were inundated with them. There have been Mockumentaries on almost every topic, from life stories to bank robberies to serial killers to giant monster attacks to zombie uprisings. Some good. Most not. And I’m just bored to tears by them now unless they do something I’ve never seen before – like the upcoming DISTRICT 9 or something like CLOVERFIELD. Meanwhile, as noted in my YEAR ONE review, I’ve grown weary of Michael Cera’s shtick. I think he’s a great guy, and really funny – but that wore thin when placed in a historical comedy and only served to highlight what people have begun to complain about.
So if there was one person in the audience tonight who shouldn’t have connected to PAPER HEART, it was me. But I did. In fact, I really fell for it. This is not your ordinary mockumentary; it is a fusion piece merging authentic interviews - with both celebrities (many of star Charlyne Yi’s comedian friends) and real, down home heartland Americana interviewees - on the topic of what LOVE really is, with an a faux documentary about this young comedian beginning a relationship with Michael Cera (playing himself.) The lines of this documentary become so blurred that it becomes hard at times to distinguish which parts are real and which are fiction – the result being the audience just giving in and buying the whole thing (or at least most of it.)
The bulk of the film’s charm rests solely on the shoulders of the Charlyne Yi – an adorable awkward pixie of a woman from the Dmitri Martin/Napoleon Dynamite middle school hipster comedy school of entertaining. She’s weird; but delightfully so. She’s that ill at ease tomboy who hasn’t quite gotten a grasp on the whole relationship thing and is going around, making a movie about figuring it out. And I found her not only completely endearing, but enchanting. She’s hard not to love, with her paper doll plays and goofy expressions – everything we’ve seen so many emulating, but this girl nailing.
The film is pretty normal as far as standard documentaries go – until that is Charlyne meets Michael Cera at a party. Cera, who had seen her perform, pulls all the typical boy antics trying to fawn over her, which she simply doesn’t know how to handle. Here Cera does everything people are starting to get tired of – but rather than playing a character, he’s playing himself. And somehow he makes the whole thing fresh, as if we’re really watching this awkward comedian try to woo another awkward comedian. And these two have a perfect hipster comedian chemistry together that just works – creating in mocumentary format the kind of thing people fell for in JUNO and were looking for in NICK AND NORA’S INFINITE PLAYLIST.
I loved the goofy little thing. It’s really a heartfelt, fun ride that captures the clumsy, inelegant bumbling of young, dorky love. I’ve known girls like this and watched as they fell into these exact same relationships – and watched them screw it up the same way. The film’s only real hurdle is that it is very, very, very hip. Almost too hip for its own good. And those inclined to dislike things based upon how close to the popular edge they dance will find plenty here to mock – despite its good heart. Personally, I felt that it was never disingenuous – that these young comedians really are on that razor’s edge. But it’s safe to say that if you’re someone who rolls their eyes at the post-JUNO attachment to awkward youth – this will give you plenty to gripe about.
Overall, it’s a tidy little package that makes for a great, offbeat, quirky date movie that nails absolutely everything that it aims for. I'm eager to begin seeing Yi do a few more mainstream projects. Definitely recommended.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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Why would I want to see this when there are secret agent guinea pigs spewing potty jokes?
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Saw the trailer for this weeks ago and thought it was something worth looking at.. glad you give it a thumbs up Massa.
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God damn assholes. I'm fucking surrounded by them on this college campus, and they are the biggest load of pretentious windbags on the planet. Fuck them all.
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And I don't agree about Michael Cera doing the same routine. This character is very different from the Juno and Arrested Development characters. It's given me a lot of hope for his Scott Pilgrim portrayal. (really hoping he doesn't fuck that up).
And I developed a serious crush on Charlyne Yi during the movie, which was solidified during the Q&A afterword. She's goddamn adorable! -
Tripping on a hole in a paper heart. NIce.
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fucking Micheal Cera should be punished for Year One and not be allowed to make movies for a year. Same with Jack Black. I don't care if they fucking found the greatest comedy movie of all time. They should have to wait a year or two to make up for that child molestation case of a movie they call Year One.
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have you seen NBT: Never Been Thawed? Great mockumentary.
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...not having seen the movie these kids look pretty geeky to me...and I won't take any simplistic answers about style of glasses and vintage T shirts...
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The difference between Geek and Hipster is in your ability to make a witty comeback. Geeks just say stupid shit like, well your dumb because you didn't know NCC-1701E was the Enterprise from First Contact. Hipsters say shit like, The Entire Script of Juno. Also Geeks are harmless and keep to themselves and usually are into cool shit. Hipsters are the next generation of hippies, they just follow shit because someone/thing told them it was cool. Also they want to try to make you cool and think your uncoll if you don't like the EXACT same thing you like. Geeks could give a fuck what you do. I wish SNL weren't so fucked up about their clips. There was a skit from when SNL was at its peek in the early 90s, called Geek, Dork or Spaz. It was a game show were cool people tried to figure out if someone was a Geek, Dork or Spaz. It ended with David Spade being the trick contestent...he was a Spazzy Geek.
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Also they want to try to make you cool and think your uncool if you don't like the EXACT same thing they like*
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Visit Look at This Fucking Hipster.com (www.latfh.com), and it will tell you everything you need to know. Atlanta (where I live) is infested with a very specific kind of hipster; all the guys have facial hair like "Youth and Young Manhood"-era Kings of Leon, only they wear ironic jean shorts and fanny packs; and all the girls look like Kat Dennings, but probably hate Kat Dennings. It's enough to make you just want to punch... everyone.
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Geeks are cool being geeks. Hipsters are geeks who don;t accept they are geeks and make attempts to be pretentious to offset the fact that they are geeks. Hipsters are geeks in denial, they find a trend and follow it because that's what the cool kids do, but nothing they follow is cool. Shit that geeks follow is often cool because geeks really don;t give a shit if it's cool, because they accept that they are geeks. Hipsters look to movies like Juno to define them as cool when in fact, the lead characters of Juno are fucking geeks. Basically, hipsters are fucking geeks, a lower class of geeks because they are trying so fucking hard, which just kind of makes them pathetic geeks. The vain attempts to stick to party lines and break into something cool destines them to be fucking geeks all of their lives, whereas some geeks break out and become cool and/or even popular because not giving a fuck what people think shows integrity which is the most charismatic character trait a human being can have.
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Because that was the gayest thing ever.
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From what I understand, the stuff about Yi and Cera, what you referred to as a faux documentary, was real and included in the film as the two of them started a relationship. I believe that aspect wasn't planned for the film but as they gathered footage for the film they found the Yi/Cera relationship proved to be as compelling as the footage they were collecting for the original intent of the movie.
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There's a great one.
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No, that's not right. She wanted to just make a documentary on what is true love, and when she started filming it, a realization came that the interviews wouldn't hold up as a movie on its own. So, she asked her then-boyfriend, Cera, to help her out and film an interwoven story where they play themselves falling in love with each other.
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...but I'm going to get to the bottom of this. When I get to the bottom of it I might have to break my boot off and leave it sticking there...or maybe not...I'll make that decision based on how annoying things are when I get there...
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I looked at the Fucking Hipster.com and laughed my ass off. The captions are priceless.
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Come on, Massa! It had its charms, but Yi and Cera are strictly one-note. I thought the film was most interesting during the interviews with real people who have relatable discussions. (That and the puppet sequences; those were cool.) Yi's childish view of what "Love" is (yucky, something to giggle at) will probably become some tween's favorite film, but for us adults, there's not much to be discovered.
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...www.latfh.com is funny, and it turns out that fuckinghipster.com is a porn site...so everybody wins.
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it's fulfilling its promise.
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You're a big, sloppy vagina of a movie-goer. Go on, admit it!
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I both completely agree and disagree. While the bulk of the film is told from that immature tween perspective - the film's final scenes betray the beginning of understanding what love really is. That final moment when they turn off the camera is kind of heartbreaking...because that's the moment she really gets it. It's not a film about a 10 year perspective teaching US about love, it's about someone with that perspective learning about it themselves.
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... would make her like what Cera is now. An annoying personality who gets lucky every few years. Cera's been doing the same thing in every film (even this one, which I liked). Lets have Yi do more things like this, more original material where she can be herself instead of playing it. Also, I sent my review of this to Harry and he didn't post, what gives? It was a fair portrayal I thought...
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