Last night Ashley and I went to see Paper Heart at the Bethesda Row Cinemas. This mockumentary is about main character Charlyne Yi's quest to make a documentary about the true nature of love (in case you don't know Charlyne Yi was the Asian girl in Knocked up.) I'm going to spoil it, she finds love with her real life on and off again better half Michael Cera (best known for Juno and this year's mega-ulra-super-mind blowing hit Year One). This movie is very cute and of course very quirky. If you're into Michael Cera, Charlyne Yi is the Asian-female version of him.
When watching, I felt this movie had 2 different parts: Sometimes they are making what feels like a real documentary: interviews of non-famous people talking about love, which comes across very sweet. The other part is the actual love story between the two main characters (Yi conveniently happens to fall in love during production of this documentary so they are forced to add her into the story.)
In an attempt to maintain authenticity the movie made several efforts to remind the audience that the two main characters were being filmed as part of a documentary. I understand this kind of thing is needed, but I felt a little beaten over the head with this reminder. My other gripe was that during the love story portions the production value was unrealistically high. Yes the entire movie was shot handheld documentaryesque, but there seemed to be an awfully large number of cameras on set to document just two people eating at a diner, not a deal breaker, but it distracted me a little.
Maybe it's my bias towards documentaries, but I think this movie would have been better for me, had they followed through and made this mockumentary a real documentary. Maybe not, maybe stick with their mockumentary format and add more documentary and make the fake love story a little more subtle. Overall, I laughed, I was entertained, it was cute, really good for a date, I won't buy it on video, but I don't regret spending the money on it.
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