Here in the hive, we have very discerning tastes. And by discerning I mean we grab literally anything that moves, drain its lifeforce out, and move on. Like ID4 aliens, or Kaiju. However, beggars can also be choosers, and this week I chose what was easily the most frustratingly bad movie I've watched in a long time, 2012's The Paperboy.
I should have known better. All of us should have the fateful day we opened that Netflix envelope. Sprung from the mind of Lee Daniels, the man responsible for bringing us Monster's Ball and the celluloid crime that is Shadowboxer, The Paperboy is something that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.
First things first, let's get to the reason I compared today's entry to those other two movies. if you've ever seen Monster's Ball you know that it should not be confused with Charlize Theron's Monster, or the incredible indie sci-fi thriller Monsters whose director is now helming the Godzilla reboot. No, MB is responsible to one of the grossest sex scenes distributed by mainstream Hollywood. If you ever hear a woman tell you "make me feel good" and you immediately lose your turgid boner then you remember That Scene and can obviously sympathize with me.
Shadowboxer is the previous entry by Daniels, a bizarre unsexy psychosexual "thriller" about an incestual relationship between assassins Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren.
The man loves male buttcheeks, what can i say.
Which brings us to The Paperboy. Do you like rough sex? Rough sex with an accused murderer freed from prison on a technicality? Rough sex with a murderer who is drenched in buckets of sweat, likes to wrap his hands around your throat, bite off your panyhose, and happens to be John Cusack?
Well then I've got good news for you!
Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey serve as two small bright points in the film. Two brothers, the older of whom is a journalist from 1963 Miami while the younger one delivers newspapers. Idealistic McConaughey is shooting to win a Pulitzer Prize by exposing the faults of the justice system, and sets his sights on freeing a man who was likely falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. The man in question is Cusack, whose existence was brought to McConaughey's attention by a sexpot Nicole Kidman, who writes convicts letters and gets off on them telling her how much they want to fuck her.
Ready for things to get weird? Well, not so much as weird since it already was, but much, much worse. Efron falls in love with Kidman's character, who works with the brothers and McConaughey's black Englishman assistant on freeing Cusack. She thinks it's cute, pretty much leading him around for the entirety of the movie by the dick. "Tee hee hee, I write letters to criminals and will fuck anything else that moves including McConaughey's assistant but I don't want to ruin our friendship."
Which all culminates in Kidman peeing on Zac Efron's face after he staggers out of the ocean, covered in jellyfish stings.
After an initial jailhouse meeting where Cusack and Kidman's characters, not allowed to touch each other, talk each other off and stain Cusack's prison-issue trousers with semen, everyone starts to sour on Cusack. Circumstantial evidence put him behind bars, but it's increasingly obvious that he is indeed a scummy character, a racist, might a murderer, probable rapist, etc. But all that is too late! With the Pulitzer in sight, McConaughey goes out drunk one night, cruising (oh yeah it turns out he's a homosexual), and winds up being tortured nearly to death, saved only by the timely arrival of Efron and Kidman after she finally decided to give Efron a pity fuck.
McConaughey's assistant decides to run the story while he's in the hospital anyway, plot holes and faulty research aside, and Cusack is made a free man.
Only.... he winds up being a bad person. He whisks "poor" Nicole off to a shack out in the everglades to live with the other inbred racist hill people to have lots of degenerate aberrant sex while making an income hunting alligators. Kidman, learning that courting psychopaths was possibly a poor idea, writes to Efron to come save her.
Our intrepid white knight and his older brother, who was rendered a cyclops during the gay-bashing, rush off to rescue the fair maiden, but alas Cusack beat her to death about five minuted before they arrive. A fight ensues, and WHOOPS McConaughey gets his throat slit with a machete.
And then the movie.. just ends. Efron runs off into the wilderness, collects the bodies of his brother and Kidman, and then there's a closing narration.
I wanted to like this, at first. The setting of civil rights era Florida is fascinating (there's an interesting five minutes after an enraged Efon unthinkingly calls McConaughey's assistant a nigger and the resulting fallout, but that's basically the only good scene), and Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey bring pretty much the only enjoyable acting to the table, but overall the movie falls flat.
I gave this thing a 3 on Netflix. 1 star since that's the lowest you can rate it, then a star each for Efron and McConaughey.
Don't watch it, just... dont.
Shadowboxer is the previous entry by Daniels, a bizarre unsexy psychosexual "thriller" about an incestual relationship between assassins Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren.
The man loves male buttcheeks, what can i say.
Which brings us to The Paperboy. Do you like rough sex? Rough sex with an accused murderer freed from prison on a technicality? Rough sex with a murderer who is drenched in buckets of sweat, likes to wrap his hands around your throat, bite off your panyhose, and happens to be John Cusack?
Well then I've got good news for you!
Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey serve as two small bright points in the film. Two brothers, the older of whom is a journalist from 1963 Miami while the younger one delivers newspapers. Idealistic McConaughey is shooting to win a Pulitzer Prize by exposing the faults of the justice system, and sets his sights on freeing a man who was likely falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. The man in question is Cusack, whose existence was brought to McConaughey's attention by a sexpot Nicole Kidman, who writes convicts letters and gets off on them telling her how much they want to fuck her.
Ready for things to get weird? Well, not so much as weird since it already was, but much, much worse. Efron falls in love with Kidman's character, who works with the brothers and McConaughey's black Englishman assistant on freeing Cusack. She thinks it's cute, pretty much leading him around for the entirety of the movie by the dick. "Tee hee hee, I write letters to criminals and will fuck anything else that moves including McConaughey's assistant but I don't want to ruin our friendship."
Which all culminates in Kidman peeing on Zac Efron's face after he staggers out of the ocean, covered in jellyfish stings.
After an initial jailhouse meeting where Cusack and Kidman's characters, not allowed to touch each other, talk each other off and stain Cusack's prison-issue trousers with semen, everyone starts to sour on Cusack. Circumstantial evidence put him behind bars, but it's increasingly obvious that he is indeed a scummy character, a racist, might a murderer, probable rapist, etc. But all that is too late! With the Pulitzer in sight, McConaughey goes out drunk one night, cruising (oh yeah it turns out he's a homosexual), and winds up being tortured nearly to death, saved only by the timely arrival of Efron and Kidman after she finally decided to give Efron a pity fuck.
McConaughey's assistant decides to run the story while he's in the hospital anyway, plot holes and faulty research aside, and Cusack is made a free man.
Only.... he winds up being a bad person. He whisks "poor" Nicole off to a shack out in the everglades to live with the other inbred racist hill people to have lots of degenerate aberrant sex while making an income hunting alligators. Kidman, learning that courting psychopaths was possibly a poor idea, writes to Efron to come save her.
Our intrepid white knight and his older brother, who was rendered a cyclops during the gay-bashing, rush off to rescue the fair maiden, but alas Cusack beat her to death about five minuted before they arrive. A fight ensues, and WHOOPS McConaughey gets his throat slit with a machete.
And then the movie.. just ends. Efron runs off into the wilderness, collects the bodies of his brother and Kidman, and then there's a closing narration.
I wanted to like this, at first. The setting of civil rights era Florida is fascinating (there's an interesting five minutes after an enraged Efon unthinkingly calls McConaughey's assistant a nigger and the resulting fallout, but that's basically the only good scene), and Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey bring pretty much the only enjoyable acting to the table, but overall the movie falls flat.
I gave this thing a 3 on Netflix. 1 star since that's the lowest you can rate it, then a star each for Efron and McConaughey.
Don't watch it, just... dont.
