Now don’t tell me that when you heard that Precious director Lee Daniels was directing a film about a love-crazed lady (played by Nicole Kidman) who is obsessed with a man on death row (John Cusack) that you thought, “yes, this will be fantastic and insightful and awards-worthy and dramatic and searing.” You did? But then you heard that Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron were co-starring as brothers who investigate the potential wrongful conviction of Cusack, who also get mixed up with Kidman, and it’s all kinds of wacky and crazy and embarrassing and you changed your mind? No? Really?
But then you heard that Kidman pees on Efron in an act of love at some point in the movie and you remembered, “oh, yes, Lee Daniels. Hack.” Good. That said, wow, can The Paperboy arrive in theaters now? The film’s first trailer is positively off the wall, the sort of marketing that includes review pull quotes that include words like “pulpy,” “sweaty,” and “down and dirty” in order to sell the film. And while Kidman doesn’t urinate on Efron in this first trailer, it just might contain a glimpse of her face while in the act (in other news, can you believe this movie?). Check it out after the break.
Our intrepid Euro-correspondent Simon Gallagher saw the film at Cannes, and while he admired the source material and the performances, he took issue with quite a bit of it. Of the film, he wrote ,”Unfortunately, The Paperboy is a tale of a director getting in the way of fine source material, badly fudging his lines and distracting from the finer elements of his film – story and performances – with an artistic agenda that is muddled and occasionally inarticulate. It is a major shame, because Dexter’s novel is great, and in deciding to stamp his own identity on the story without the required restraint or intelligence, Daniels seems to have done his best t0 undermine it.” Sounds about right!
The Paperboy will open in limited release on October 5th. [Yahoo! Movies]