It’s probably fair to say that when Lee Daniels premiered his followup to “Precious” at Cannes earlier this year, it was one that certainly got critics and audiences talking. "The Paperboy," starring Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, David Oyelowo and Zac Efron, split critics, with some heralding it as a complete misfire, while others found some merit within the film. So is it a disaster or a masterpiece? Well, we sided with the former and called it “a lurid, florid, humid, flaccid and insipid waste of money for the audience and for everyone who made it” before awarding it an F-grade.
But with the film set to debut in a limited run from October 5th, you’ll soon be able to make your minds up for yourselves, and until then you’ll purely have to go off clips like the new one below. In it we see all the main players mentioned before, and the imprisoned Cusack meets his pen pal girlfriend (Kidman) and her three “paperboys”.
With all the fuss surrounding the movie, there are a lot of people (this writer included) who have yet to see the film and are fascinated by any glimpse they can get. There’s not an awful lot to glean here (considering two of the characters don’t even speak) but the performances of Cusack and Kidman certainly seem to be somewhat out there. The film will start to roll out across various territories from October onwards, but has yet to secure distribution in some fairly major ones including this writer’s native U.K. Is that a blessing or a curse? [EW]
Kidman looks fierce. Her reviews are great. She's getting a tribute at NYFF. She's really earning street cred with this performance.
I'm waiting for this to be terrible but everything so far points to my enjoyment, I like this clip, and think Kidman and Cusack are amazingly absorbed in extremely edgy territory, they're certainly playing out there characters, but seem to have a real sense of them – by the way men and women like that do exist in real life, though clearly not in polite society. I'm beginning to wonder if the critical divide has something to do with personal boundaries of decency, and the kind of people we want to see on the screen, more than the actual quality of the film, I'll certainly go along to see.
Lionsgate picked up UK distribution in May 2011.