The Paperboy (2012)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Trashy and melodramatic, The Paperboy is enlivened by a strong cast and a steamy, sordid plot, but it's uneven and often veers into camp.
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Cast
as Ward Jansen
as Jack Jansen
as Charlotte Bless
as Hillary Van Wetter
as Yardley Acheman
as W.W. Jansen
as Anita
as Tyree Van Wetter
as Ellen Guthrie
as Hustler #1
as Victim
as Sheriff Thurmond Call
as Death Row Guard
as Sam Ellison
as Mr. Guthrie/Wedding Guest
as Weldon Pine
as Eugene
as Gate Guard
as Kitchen Supervisor
as Bartender
as Wedding Photographer
as Charlotte Girlfriend #1
as Charlotte Girlfriend #2
as Pam/Beach Girl #1
as Kim/Beach Girl #2
as Yardley's Girlfriend
as Wedding Singer
as Singer #1
as Singer #2
as Singer #3
as Comedian
as Lady in Bar
as Jennifer
as Nancy
as Cousin Alice
as Interviewer
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Critic Reviews for The Paperboy
All Critics (143) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (61) | Rotten (82) | DVD (1)
"The Paperboy" is one of those rare examples where you might wish the movie was less faithful to the book.
Yes, it's a dizzying stew set to boil.
The Paperboy is southern Gothic wallowing in the swamp of low camp. And if the wallowing were deliberate, this might have been hugely funny.
The Paperboy bears some promise as a good-bad movie, but it unfolds as a bad-bad one.
It's a movie that seems to have a mild form of heatstroke: it's blurry, as if filmed long ago, and feverish, and the story wanders all over the place as if lost in a bayou. When it's over, you want to wipe your brow.
The Paperboy is over-the-top every which way you look.
Audience Reviews for The Paperboy
It looks and feels like something made in the 1970s but with a sordid quality that makes it so absurdly hilarious in all its filthy nonsense - thanks also to a terrific performance by Nicole Kidman as the trashy Southern blonde, who steals every scene she appears in.
Super Reviewer
Almost X rated - lots of graphic sex and violence. This is a very dark film, with people making terrible, tragic choices. Cusak, and McConaughey, were excellent....but, even great acting couldn't make all the ugliness worthwhile for me, or save a pointless script.
Super Reviewer
Set in the Jim Crow south during the civil rights movement, this lurid melodrama follows a college dropout as he helps his journalist brother investigate the case of a man who may have been wrongfully imprisoned; a strange love triangle heats up when he falls for the accused's nymphomaniacal death-row-groupie fiancee. The word "trashy" was invented for stories like this; it's as much fun as a stolen hump in the backseat of a 1965 Chevy Impala.
Super Reviewer
The Paperboy Quotes
| Ward Jansen: | Better be late and be right than be first and be wrong... boy! |
| Yardley Acheman: | I'm sweating like a pregnant nun back here. |
| Yardley Acheman: | You put your eyes on me again I will mess you up! |
| Charlotte Bless: | If anyone's gonna pee on him, it's gonna be me. |
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