Home / News / Did The Paperboy deliver at Cannes?

Did The Paperboy deliver at Cannes?

By on May 25, 2012

I’m not a Lee Daniels fan at all, having not cared for either of his first two films, and finding his direction to be distracting and often porous. That all being said, I’m always open to a filmmaker surprising me. ‘The Paperboy’ has an intriguing cast (including John Cusack Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, and Matthew McConaughey) and plot, so I was hopeful that Daniels could finally sway me here. The early word from critics is incredibly divided, though most agree that the film is trashy and not especially great…they’re just undecided on how intentional that is (they also are rather obsessed over a certain scene I won’t mention here involving Efron and Kidman). After the jump I’ll share some reviews with you, but it doesn’t look like Daniels has another date with Oscar. Take a gander below…


James Rocchi of The Playlist (here) is unequivocal in his hated of the film, calling it “a disastrous flop”, while Justin Chang of Variety (here) is nicer, saying it’s “not unenjoyable”. As for Todd McCarthy over at The Hollywood Reporter (here), he actually liked it (along with almost everything so far it seems), saying “Its funky disreputability is part of the pleasure of Lee Daniels’ Southern melodrama of murder and sex). No one has spoken much of its Oscar chances, so I think it might be safe to move it lower on all of our predictions. Time will tell though…

-Thoughts? Discuss on the Forum!

When he’s not obsessing over new Oscar predictions on a weekly basis, Joey is seeing between 200 and 300 movies a year. He views the best in order to properly analyze the awards race/season each year, but he also watches the worst for reasons he mostly sums up as "so you all don't have to". In his spare time, you can usually find him complaining about the Jets or the Mets. Still, he lives and dies by film. Joey's a voting member of the Internet Film Critics Association as well. Today the IFCA, tomorrow the world!
Related Items

8 Comments

  1. Jessie Makowski

    May 25, 2012 at 6:33 pm

    Does Nicole Kidman actually pee on Zac Efron in this movie?

      (Quote)  (Reply)

    Reply

  2. Greg Fletcher.

    May 25, 2012 at 7:28 pm

    I enjoyed his directing on “Precious”, but this film’s cast and story seems hopeless.

      (Quote)  (Reply)

    Reply

  3. Kat

    May 25, 2012 at 11:23 pm

    Do Nicole and Zac actually have a love scene together in this movie? I find it hard to believe…

      (Quote)  (Reply)

    Reply

  4. GL

    May 26, 2012 at 4:47 pm

    I thought since the beginning that this was more of a fun parody of some sorts that he was trying to pull. I guess it just didn’t work for some.

      (Quote)  (Reply)

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


+ 2 = four

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>



UA-17272164-1