Real-life sweethearts Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi star in a fictionalized version of their romance in this indie semi-documentary comedy, written by Yi. Playing themselves, Yi and Cera embark on a scripted version of their own story. In the movie, Yi has agreed to be the subject of a documentary about her quest to discover if love really exists, since she's never experienced it. As part of her participation in the project, she has a film crew follow her around throughout every new development
in her love life -- which gets complicated when she starts dating fellow comedian Cera. This portion of the film is all narrative, and was written into the script, but also as part of the documentary, Yi travels the country interviewing various people about their opinions and experiences with love, and these portions of the film are real -- the interviewees are not actors. Melding truth and fantasy, Paper Heart uses equal parts comedy and realism to resolve the ultimate question of whether love is fact or fiction. ~ Cammila Albertson, Rovi
Paper Heart gets by on easygoing charm, rather like Yi herself, whose low-fi comedy is built upon us rooting for her, perhaps hoping that surely there's more magnetism to her than this.
It's easy to see how this quirky, offbeat approach could seem refreshing within the rarefied, hermetic atmosphere of a festival. Elsewhere, however, it comes across as amateurish and considerably less charming.
This breach with the audience does matter, for it is one thing to seduce your viewers and quite another to trick them. Love is all about trust, after all.
Paper Heart doesn't unearth the meaning of 'love' (spoiler alert?) but it at least shows us how real human beings deal with all those confusing emotions that might equal something close to it.
There are so many things about the film that could have been annoying (...) but the story is so refreshing and honest that it would be almost impossible to find anything annoying here.
Yi's worldview is best represented by a song she writes for Cera, a Weezer-esque bit of nerd rock called You Smell Like Christmas. At first the song is irritating, but it sticks in your head and just like Paper Heart, the song is annoyingly hummable.
Miraculously effective if kooky cross-country dissertations on the anatomy of love, including Vegas matrimony; biker bar romance deconstructed as 'thirty minutes in the back seat,' and unrequited animal attraction at a local zoo.
It's not the worst cutesy, lo-fi love story you'll ever see, but it's shown up by all those genuine true-life tales. Alongside them, its falseness is too glaring.
The segments featuring real people are genuinely affecting, but the realisation that everything else is probably being acted - that truth may be polluted by hoax - gives this otherwise lightweight film a sly, subversive edge.
Where Paper Heart does shine, however, is in the reflections of the general public and few will fail to be moved by their truly inspiring and heartwarming stories of true love.
"A story about love that's taking on a life of it's own."Paper Heart is an odd and extremely off beat fake documentary. What's more odd then the film is the fact that I actually liked it. Not a lot, but I did enjoy it for the most part. On another note, I don't think I could come up with a couple that is more perfect
for each other then Charleyne Yi and Michael Cera. Both of whom are the definition of awkward. The movie really relies on if you can take Yi's brand of humor or not. Most can't, I however, am a fan of the awkward, it's so not funny it's funny comedy style Yi employs. The movie centers around Yi not believing in love. She meets Michael Cera and likes him, but she still doesn't believe in love. Although I did like the movie, it does over stay it's welcome. But it is a short little movie; clocking in at about an hour twenty. We see familiar faces like Seth Rogen and Demetri Martin for little cameos. The only thing that really got old was all the old couples that have interview. I can understand a few, but it seems like overkill. They all say basically the same thing. If they would have cut one or two of them out, I would have liked Paper Heart a lot more. The runtime would have came in at like an hour and five to ten minutes, but that probably would have helped the movie a little too. As it is though, I still enjoyed it for it's awkwardness. I would never recommend it to anyone though because I do understand that the majority would not like this movie at all.
July 28, 2011
Melvin White
Super Reviewer
Oh my god, I'm usually not that shallow, but Charlyne Yi is so unattractive and awkward I literally could not watch for any longer. Girlfriend best not act ever again. Also this movie: way way too annoying and self-aware, even for hipsters.
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