The Paperboy Reviews
Flix Capacitor
Though not quite the trainwreck that its kicking at Cannes suggested, The Paperboy doesn't know what it wants to be. Still, anyone who likes the sight of Zac Efron in his pants will be in heaven.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
We Got This Covered
Lee Daniels' The Paperboy is a steamy, sweaty and trashy piece of cinema that rarely gets by on its filthy and wild performances.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Schmoes Know
You know when a get a burrito at Qdoba or Chiptole and they put too much deliciousness in there and you try to eat it and it just falls into a mess? Kinda like this movie. It's a burrito that should've been double wrapped.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.9/5
Irish Times
With Precious and The Paperboy, Daniels has confirmed his status as the most emotionally incontinent director of his generation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Film School Rejects
Despite some fine performances, The Paperboy is a tale of a director getting in the way of fine source material with an artistic agenda that is muddled and inarticulate.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Moviedex
Lewd, ludicrous and utterly convinced of its own gritty artistic merit, The Paperboy's closest cinematic cousin may very well be Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Slant Magazine
The Paperboy deserves to be seen for its pulpy, well-executed excess, but as a filmmaker, Lee Daniels seems ignorant of how the shocks distract from the story.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Scotsman
Missing is any sense of urgency about the murder case it is supposed to be investigating. Also missing is coherence, and any sense that this profane potboiler deserves much more than some disbelieving snorts ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
This is London
It may yet become a camp classic, if no other kind.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top Critic
San Diego Union-Tribune
The one thread that does run through Daniels' wildly fluctuating, self-indulgent film is a preoccupation with pointless perversity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Lee Daniels proves that "Precious" was a fluke.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
The movie as a whole is a rather grim, dismal experience where the elements never quite gel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Ludicrously obsessed with sex to often laughable extremes, it's the rare film that can be described as "horny."
It's errant camp, which has the effect of undermining our involvement in the mystery.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Times-Picayune
An ugly, disjointed smear of over-the-top melodrama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
The Playlist
A lurid, florid, humid, flaccid and insipid waste of time and money for the audience and for everyone who made it.
Film4
You certainly couldn't accuse anyone involved in The Paperboy of playing it safe, and for this reason, Lee Daniels' film is one to file under misjudged must-sees.
The Movie Minute
I'm all for filmmakers reaching out of their comfort zone, but what's with this insistent attraction to scummy, sweaty lowlifes? Does allowing your crotch to be shown in an unflattering position make you A Serious Artist?
