The Paperboy (2012) Film Review

This is a tough film… it starts as a film about a couple of hopefuls who are trying to get a possibly innocent criminal out of jail and turns into… well, I don’t really know what. It’s all really tricky.

Zac Efron plays Jack, a young guy in Florida in the 1960s who is dragged into a strange world after his brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey) returns to town to try to expose injustices in relation to a murder conviction. The convicted is Hilary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a repulsive man from the swamps. Ward brings along his writing partner Yardley (David Oyelowo), who creates waves as he is a black man in this racist society, and Charlotte (Nicole Kidman), a racy woman who believes after corresponding with Van Wetter, that not only is he innocent, but that they are in love. Jack is in love with Charlotte in no time. And then things get really horrible. The whole story is told by the family maid, Anita (Macy Gray).

It’s interesting, and then it is creepy, and then it is a bit shocking, and then thing get a bit twisted, and then things get horrible and then more horrible and I am possibly never going to recover. And Nicole Kidman, well, generally I find her very difficult to watch these days, but she it fabulous in this. No wonder she was nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.

 

17 Again (2009) Film Review

Mike O’Donnell (played by Zac Efron as a teenager and Matthew Perry as an adult) was a high school basketball superstar who was about to play for a scout with the chance of gaining a scholarship to college when his girlfriend revealed she was pregnant. He chose to marry her, but many years later, he is regretting this choice. Facing divorce, he bumps into a magical janitor at his old school that takes him back into his old body, but not back in time. He ends up, supported by his rich, geeky mate Ned (Thomas Lennon) trying to figure his life out.

What’s not to love in a body swap type film? Yes, it for teenagers, and don’t let it pretend to be anything else. Just one thing; I’d really like these films not to have sub-plots with things like Ned forcing the attractive yet hard-arsed principal into a relationship. Why have men bribing, forcing, blackmailing and generally strong handing women into relationships? It’s so misogynistic; why could he not have simply impressed her? And incidentally, wouldn’t it have been nice for him to discover that they had something in common, and actually got along rather than for him to be struck by her beauty? But, apart from that, it was a fun film.