The Tennessee middle school’s story is worth hearing, but rather than a feature-length documentary, it’s best suited as a short TV newsmagazine package.
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04/26/05
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Paper Clips (2004)
71
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Reviews Counted:51
Fresh:36
Rotten:15
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: A touching, though somewhat flat, documentary that follows a homogenous class of white Protestant eighth graders as they learn the importance of tolerance by erecting a monument to the 6 million victims of the Holocaust.
Theatrical Release:Sep 8, 2004 Limited
Synopsis: The town of Whitwell is a tiny community of about two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of... [More]
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Reviews for Paper Clips
You will never look at the familiar little fasteners the same way again. This is an incredible 87 minutes in a movie theater on several levels.
04/26/05
Affectingly documents an example of caring, concerned students and the inspiring educators who lead them.
04/08/05
Compassionate, inspirational documentary about "a journey that begins in the brain and ends in the heart"...
04/02/05
It's a remarkable story, and well worth seeing, particularly for its handful of genuinely affecting moments.
03/25/05
Where other documentarians look for a charismatic personality to enliven their films, Berlin and Fab focus on the community as a whole.
03/24/05
Has powerful moments, mostly courtesy of the Holocaust survivors, but the interviews and narration sound overly coached, and...the film is given to repetitive overstatement.
03/13/05
Paper Clips isn't very well shot, but the kids' hearts and compassion come through quite clearly nonetheless.
03/10/05
What makes Paper Clips so powerful and moving is the way everyone in the film seems affected by the Whitwell project. The students change. The teachers change. The townspeople change.
03/04/05
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02/28/05
Not a sophisticated or very challenging film, nor should it be. It is straightforward, heartfelt and genuine.
02/25/05
Top CriticSymbolism is hard to swallow, and it's near impossible to relate to these paper clips as souls, especially when they are talked about in terms of collecting and counting and displaying.
02/24/05
It's nice, and occasionally affecting, but also fairly pedestrian.
02/22/05
The events depicted in Paper Clips are by turns heartwarming, horrifying, amazing, and exactly the type of real-world improbability that the documentary form was created for.
02/20/05
Low-key but inspirational.
02/18/05
It's difficult to watch this and not get swept away by the emotion of their journey... It's not a perfect documentary, but it's a very moving one.
02/18/05
The project is chronicled eloquently in Paper Clips, a documentary about how a few kids can make a difference, one paper clip at a time.
02/17/05
Top CriticThe story becomes more about the collection of the paper clips and less and less about what the paper clips represent.
02/17/05
Paper Clips isn't the slickest documentary you'll ever see, or the shrewdest or the most dramatic. But it could be the most moving.
02/11/05
A small, heartening slice of life that feels like a crucial step toward something bigger.
02/11/05
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