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“The Paperboy” is great trash, and as Pauline Kael told us, the movies are so seldom great art that if we can’t appreciate great trash, we might as well not go at all. This is a humid, deep South wallow in raunch, with the wrong man on Death Row, the right man lurking in a swamp with his inbred family, a dead sheriff, a curious newspaper reporter, a slutty blond slattern, the younger man who adores her and alligators, lots of ’em.
The characters in “The Paperboy” spend a lot of time wading up to their waists in swamp water, and the movie wades in right along with them. When the movie played during Cannes last May, some audiences were heard booing, saying that a movie like this should not be shown in the French Mecca of cinema. I have news for them. Had this film been in good taste, that would have been in bad taste.
Taking place in the year 1969, “The Paperboy” features Matthew McConaughey as Ward Jansen, a journalist for the Miami Times who is back in Lately, Florida to investigate a murder case involving a man on Death Row. This man is Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a barbaric, sadistic man who we assume ought to be killed for no reason at all. Ward enlists the help of his younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) who becomes an apprentice to him and to his fellow reporter Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) who is a British black man and leaves the locals baffled.
In the meeting is Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), a tacky blonde that appears to have styled herself after birthing a Trashy Lingerie catalog. She probably served as an inspiration for the bombshells photographed on the covers of low-quality novels written by Mickey Spillane in the 1950s. Charlotte has yet to meet Hillary Van Wetter, but the two have been writing to each other and are planning a wedding.
Many women fall in love with men on Death Row and Charlotte is no exception. For her, the romance is hopelessly masochistic. In a scene that is beyond description, Ward and Jack take her to her first meeting with Hillary in person and their romance is so much in their imagination that they end up having a simultaneous orgasm ten feet apart.
It takes real guts to act out a scene like that, but Nicole Kidman still isn’t done. Jack is an ex-college student turned local paper delivery boy for his father’s newspaper and Charlotte flirts mercilessly with him. Despite being a swimmer, Jack’s body has jelly legs. Charlotte lies next to him on the beach and to cool off, Jack jumps into the ocean and gets stung by jelly fish.
As the local girls make a ruckus over how his allergic reaction might be cured by urinating on him, he crawls half-way ashore. You think life saving information like this would be commonly known, but the real question is whether it works or not. The answer can be found in “The Paperboy.”
The story begins with Anita Chester, the Jansen family’s cook and maid, recounting everything over a flashback. She seems to have good grasp over the events, yet, like most people including myself, refrains from speaking about it. At least, not while being a black maid during the year of 1969 in Lately, Florida.
The first film directed by Lee Daniels since “Precious” is “The Paperboy”, which displays the same creative instincts for grandiose melodrama. The film is based on a novel by Pete Dexter, who also co-wrote the screenplay along with dividing the pieces among the many authors that come from the milder areas of Florida including the likes of Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, and Carl Hiaasen.
I understand the type of people that booed this movie at Cannes. They applaud for slow, sulking spectacles captured in cynical darkness. On some occasions, I marvel at such films. Regardless, “The Paperboy” expects you to jump straight into the water sans any protective covering against jellyfish.
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