I am a massive fan of films, if you ask my boyfriend what I do with my life his answer would be "sleep and watch films." And I am usually quite easily pleased, I dont prefer a specific genre and dont really have preferences when it comes to films, but this was without a doubt a film that I will put in my "top 5 worst films ever" list (along with Running With Scissors, The Good Girl, What to Expect When You're Expecting and This is the Place.) First of all, in The Paperboy, there was no coherent story line. I genuinely kept asking myself "what the fuck is going on" and if you have to ask yourself that during a film you know its terrible. It was really disjointed and hard to follow. The annoying thing, is that it had the makings of a really good film; it had an interesting storyline, good actors and of course Zac Efron. However, it was almost as though someone had read the book, and thought that it would make a good film so just rustled up a mediocre script and paid absolutely no attention to the detail. It was created with very broad strokes, but you need the detal otherwise its just a huge blob of nothing.
There were huge gaps in the film that no matter how much you focused, just couldn't be filled. When watching a film you expect to understand whats happening, but it just kept provoking questions, and not the kind of questions you want to be asking yourself, why was Ward trying to get Hillary out of jail? This made absolutely no sense to me, because it wasnt explained. And if it was, it was very easily missed.
My first mistake may have been watching this film with my dad. But I thought "Oh its only a 15 how bad can it be." Very bad. Very very bad, is the answer. The sex scenes in this film were unbelievable for a rated 15 film, I actually had to fast forward them because not only were they incredibly graphic (with John Cusack at one point burying his face into Nicole Kindman's you know what) they were also very long, they went on for minutes. I'm sure you only really have to go so far before people can imagine for themselves whats going on.
Some of the images and themes in this film were really dark and quite deeply disturbing. From what I could gather, Matthew McConaughey's character, Ward Johnson, was a homosexual that liked to engage in violent sexual intercourse with black men (taboo at the time in which the film is set) and we are introduced to this fact when he is found in a hotel room, his face completely smashed in and he is tied up. Obviously what your mind first races to is that he has been raped, so the image that they show is really quite disgusting. Not only this, but at the end of the film, Ward is graphically murdered by Hillary, who cuts his throat in front of his brother. I am 18 years old and found this whole film horrible to watch so is it really appropriate for 15 year olds?
In my honest opinion, this film had the potential to be really engaging, interesting and actually quite good. But the entire story is just butchered. Sex, violence and some good actors have just been thrown together in the hope that people will watch the film. If you want to see murder, a 20 year old boy persuing a 40 year old woman and Nicole Kidman pissing on Zac Efron, then by all means buy The Paperboy and waste an hour and a half of your life. But I strongly advise against watching this film, it is absolutely rubbish.
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