At The Theater #17: Paper Man

While I didn’t see Paper Man at the Tribeca Film Festival, it is a Tribeca Film Festival film that I saw while the festival was running. We made it back to Brooklyn from our free Snow Men screening with time to spare to catch the 9:30 Saturday night screening of Paper Man at Brooklyn Heights Cinemas. Woo-hoo! Double feature!

I probably would have liked Paper Man less if I hadn’t seen Greenberg. While watching Paper Man, I couldn’t help but think “This is what Greenberg would be like if that movie wasn’t so annoying.” Similar to Greenberg, Paper Man is about a man with mental issues and without social skills who finds himself trying to get by in a new environment. Greenberg has an awkward relationship a personal assistant played by Greta Gerwig. Paper Man’s Richard Dunn, played by Jeff Daniels, has an awkward friendship with a local high school student played by Emma Stone. Greenberg vents his frustrations to his English best friend who didn’t talk much. Dunn vents all his frustrations to his imaginary best friend named Captain Excellent, a superhero played by Ryan Reynolds. In every one of these match-ups, Paper Man wins. But then again, being better than Greenberg isn’t that much of a compliment.

I wasn’t excited about Ryan Reynolds being cast as Green Lantern Hal Jordon in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. Out of all the stars of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, I thought Nathan Fillion would have been the much better choice as Hal Jordan. Besides looking like Hal Jordan, Fillion proved he can do outerspace action in Sci-Fi’s short-lived Firefly.After seeing Ryan Reynolds here, I’m more excited than I was before about Reynolds as Green Lantern. The guy can carry himself like a superhero. Though the costume designer in Paper Man seems to have borrowed so much from Miracleman for Captain Excellent that I kept expecting him to yell out “Kimota!”

Never let your imaginary friend drive, even if he is a Super Friend.
The best part of Paper Man is Emma Stone explaining how easy it is to make soup. She explains that soup is the easiest thing to make, because you just take all the things you have lying around that aren’t maybe in tip-top shape anymore and instead of throwing them in the garbage, cook them in some chicken broth and you’ve got soup. Hmm, that sounds less appetizing than how she described it.
I’m really glad I didn’t pay $16.50 + $3.50 to see this movie. There’s an important lesson to be learned from this weekend. Very few movies are probably worth what Tribeca Film Festival charges for tickets. You’re better off waiting until they make it to your theater or to Netflix. That said, in a little less than a year I’ll once again be anticipating the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Family Festival coming to town.