[Wait, aren’t we supposed to be the cynical haters? Hey, we love being proven wrong]
You are forgiven if from the outset you mistake “Paper Heart” for eating 200 lollipops in a row while singing “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies with a fun-times marching high school band and lolcats dancing all around you. It certainly does look twee as fuck, but as all of us are reminded on occasion, you cannot always judge a book by its cover, or a film by its trailer (errrr, though the latter is usually quite easy to do where Hollywood is concerned).
Sweet, but not saccharine, and endearing, but not pre-school-like, the pseudo-doc of “Paper Heart” is a genuinely naive and charming look at love, mostly through the eyes of its main protagonist Charlyne Yi (and yes, it was billed and sold as a Michel Cera project before Sundance to drum up interest, but he’s a supporting character and this is The Yi Show).
Playing a fictional version of herself the doc/film (which does blur these line rather well) centers on Yi and her loveless life; rather, she’s never been in love and so she finds it an abstract concept and doesn’t believe it actually exists. When she reveals this statement to friends at a party, she and director Nicholas Jasenovec (played well by actor Jake M. Johnson, watch this kid get picked up quick) decide to make a documentary on the subject of Yi’s disbelief and embark on a cross country trip to get a “scientific” opinion from people around the country.
But just as they begin their journey, Yi meets Michael Cera (playing himself yet again, but still managing to elicit the biggest laughs) and tiny little sparks fly between them. While Yi and Jansoveic gather first hand testimonials of love, Yi and Cera’s tentative like/love blossoms on the occasional dates they have time to schedule in between shoots and soon the director wants to document their relationship firsthand, which causes a strain on the budding romance.
A scene where Yi interviews school kids in the south regarding what they think about love is rather hilarious and possibly even insightful (yes, kids do say the darnedest thing).
Intercut throughout all this is Yi’s hand-puppet-like interstitials, where she creates paper-figurines and plays them out on a lo-fi stylized little stage set to the twinkling and magical music (cute, but never annoying, the music, some by the actors and members of Beirut and ex-Unicorns is quite great). While potentially obnoxious, they’re actually one of our favorite parts of the film and they break up the docu-style quite nicely, giving the audience a little change of scenery.
Credit probably goes to the director for including these more genuine puppet scenes versus the unnecessarily schtick-y cameos by Bill Hader and others that were eventually cut from the film (but are still viewable on the web). The focus on “where is the love” builds as the filmmakers struggle to find an appropriately cinematic ending to the story.
Unfortunately, “Paper Heart” doesn’t make any life-changing, grand statements of love, but it is an earnest and a heart-on-sleeve look at L’amour that is far less embarrassing than most Ben Gibbard lyrics and twee, breathy delivery, if that’s what you’re truly worried about.
But it might just come down to your tolerance for sweetness and earnestness. Lord knows we generally run screaming in the opposite direction when the cinematic equivalent of a Dashboard Confessional song comes on, but “Paper Heart” is too genuinely affectionate to make the skin crawl. However, cynics beware, as those with hearts two sizes too small might find themselves a bit perturbed or find some of it cloying and contrived.
However, it feels far too innocent and with lack of pretension to be remotely calculated or that affected, but we’ve already heard a mix of opinions, so it feels like a subjective, to-each-their-own picture, but no apologies, it’s scrappy and enjoyable. [B]
