HOLLYWOOD POV: "Paper Heart"

PAPER HEART just has to be a joke on the audience. The entire time I watched this mess it reminded me of SEINFELD – the quintessential TV show about nothing - except PAPER HEART is without the humor and without the laughs. Seinfeld was consistently funny throughout eight years, whereas PAPER HEART couldn't scare up just one belly laugh during its entire 89 minutes.

While watching the film I couldn't stop thinking that what my 6 year old Catahoula Leopard Hound, Skywalker MacDoogle, does all day is wildly more interesting than anything in Charlyne Yi's unfunny self-indulgent boring youtube-video-of-a-mockumentary about her manipulated road trip attempting to understand what love means to people across America.

Are you into originality? You won’t find it here. Or are you into tedious self-reverential contrived nonsense that goes nowhere? Then buy a ticket to this stinker. Of course – no surprise - Charlyne Yi's  first stop is a Las Vegas drive-through wedding chapel, the first stop for most magazine show segments on the topic...like I said, no originality whatsoever.

Yi is supposedly funny, she has a stand-up routine and her press states she is funny, clever, and talented, but you’d never know that from this film. Instead she acts slightly mentally-challenged, annoying, and too dense to have any kind of real conversation with anyone. Rather than doing stand-up, Yi should be standing behind the counter at my local taco stand. She’d fit right in…except those guys can speak 2 languages.

Yi drags around a film crew with her as she "interviews" different people around the country - though using the word "interview" insults anyone who has ever interviewed someone else - in a mockumentary-style talking head film.  They go to various parts of the US for no obvious reason in no obvious fashion for unfunny "interviews" with people who have little to say. Yi is so bad at interviewing that no one in the film reveals anything emotionally real and she has a hard time even directing any real conversation with her subjects. Watch the trailer, that’s all you need to see as the best parts of this film, such as they are, are all in the trailer.

The only partially-enjoyable parts of this film are cutesy puppet reenactments of events. Yi and her father made the puppets after the film was finished – and obviously because there wasn’t enough material to make an actual full-length feature - and clearly way more time was spent on puppetry and puppet-making than the actual writing of a script. Most scenes between Charlyne and Cera were ad-libbed, probably while they were bored out of their minds… as you will be if you’re so unlucky as to have to see this film.

Of course Yi's careful to let the audience in on her big secret pretty quickly. Yi is the a member of the crowd of the fart, barf & vomit crew of Judd Apatow favorites (Michael Cera, Demetri Martin and Seth Rogen are just a few of many who appear here). She uses her personal relationship with Michael Cera, and her close connection with him is the only thing that could possibly explain why anyone would invest the time and money it took to make this stinker. Not only must she have used her relationship with Cera to make a deal for this film, but she uses her relationship with him as the centerpiece of this film as well. While she figures out what love is she falls in love with Cera, but keeps denying she's even interested in him. Boring! Isn't that what boys and girls did way back in Junior High School? What made anyone think this inarticulate mess was worthy of actually filming and an actual theatrical release? Oh yeah, I forgot – but Yi didn’t - Michael Cera.

And when you see Yi and Cera together you really can't understand what either sees in the other. They look like children too young to know what love is, they have absolutely no charisma with each other, they seem bored with each other and never connect, they talk about and do stupid unfunny things that don't make sense, like Cera's walking out the front door of a deli leaving Charlyne to wonder where he's gone. Then he walks in from the back of the restaurant. That's it. They think it's funny, the audience thought the scene wasn't over. Sheeple (sheep + people) doing stupid things no one in their right mind would ever do or care about...and they want the audience to pay for the right to sit in the theater and watch.  Unfunny, pointless, boring, annoying, and insulting.

Yi's voice is annoyingly sharp and high-pitched, her face is screwed up and often partially hidden by her endless parade of ugly hoodies, and her supposed humor is absent. She can barely hold a conversation with anyone, has a hard time relating to anyone she interviews. She develops absolutely no rapport with anyone, especially the audience. And, while it's a nice change to see a woman on screen without the usual foot-binding hooker heels, unbearable pencil skirts, and caked-on make-up, perhaps Yi might have benefited a bit by actually purchasing a mirror and consulting it on occasion.

Throughout the entire length of this amateurish mess - which is 89 minutes too long - I couldn't stop wondering when the story would begin...we left before Yi came in for a Q&A, the only question I could think to ask would have been...who did you force Cera to sleep with to get this film made...and how many times did he have to do it?!?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © 2009 by Digital Dogs~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digital Dogs rating: D, a complete waste of time and money.

MPAA rating: PG-13 language

Running Times: 89 Minutes

Producers Sandra Murillo, Elise Salomon, Cahrlyne Yi, Director Nicholas Jasenovec, Screenplay Charlyne Yi, Nicholas Jasenovec, DP Jay Hunter, Editor Ryan Brown, Music Cahrlyne Yi, Michael Cera, Actors Charlyne Yi, Michael Cera, Jake Johnson

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		Digital Dogs, Gather Movies Correspondent - Los Angeles
	Digital Dogs' column, HOLLYWOOD POV, published every Thursday to Gather Essentials: Movies is an insider's look at the art, people, and product of Hollywood. Digital Dogs is an opininated writer, editor, and digital designer who lives and works in the Entertainment Capital of the world. DigiDogs' unique reviews are usually written well before a film's release date, and definitely worth the advance look at the films that influence the world. Keep up with Digital Dogs' movie review series by joining her network, or subscribing to her content.