Unhappiness!

(Note: Does “tone” count as a spoiler? I bought Paper Man expecting one movie and I got a completely different one. It was a good movie and I recommend it, but it has a lot of people yelling at each other and a lot of people being unhappy in very relatable ways. As such, it stressed me out and I needed to take a couple of kitty breaks from it. Is that a spoiler? I’m going to go with “no” but let me know if you disagree. Oh, if “tone” does not count as a spoiler, know that this review only contains minor spoilers for Paper Man (cast list, plot setup, that sort of thing) so I am not going to put it behind a cut as, it seems to me, only middlin’ and major spoilers require a cut. Let me know if I’m wrong about that too.)

If I had to pick the trait that is most universal to all Independent Films it would be that they are about people who don’t know how to be happy.

Take your protagonist, have him (it’s usually a him) be a low brahmin (professor, librarian, theatre director, that sort of thing) and have him go through an existential crisis that involves him being either smartly or stupidly selfish for somewhat relatable reasons that result in him and his loved ones yelling at the top of their lungs about how unhappy they are at some point. Then, if you want the movie to be taken seriously, you have them get even more unhappy. If you feel like selling out, you have them resolve some stuff and mend some fences.

(This is in contrast to mainstream movies where the main characters are all perfectly fine with who they are, mostly… they just have to deal with explosions or the fact that the person they’re in love with doesn’t know that they are alive or maybe there’s a killer whale or something. They have a conflict that is surmountable if only they have enough gumption to ski the K2. The story is about gumption and surmounting conflicts! Which, let’s face it, is a lot less stressful emotionally than watching unhappy people yell at each other.)

Which brings us to Paper Man. Jeff Daniels plays Richard Dunn, a struggling writer (that’s the one I forgot!) who goes upstate to, he hopes, overcome his writing block and write his second book. Lisa Kudlow plays his wife Claire, a doctor who is an expert surgeon (patented a shunt!) and Ryan Reynolds plays Captain Excellent, Jeff Daniel’s Imaginary Friend for the last 40 years. While processing himself, Richard makes friends with Emma Stone’s character Abby. To delve more into what happens than I’ve already said would get us into “middlin'” territory and I want to avoid that, but know that I found many points of this movie to be quite stressful. That said, I also thought that it did a lot of really little things *VERY*, very well. For example, Captain Excellent is a delightful surprise in a movie about people who are, fundamentally, unhappy.

I recommend it. Find a loved one and watch it with him or her. Have a cat nearby.