The art of awkward goes too far with Paper Heart, the quasi non-fiction narrative in which comedian Charlyne Yi travels the countryside interviewing The People about love, while simultaneously being courted by (Yi’s real-life boyfriend) Michael Cera. Though fascinating in the ways in which it shades the lines separating the “real” from the obviously scripted (especially in the beautiful, inventive puppet animations dramatizing the documentary stories), Yi’s allegedly actual crises of romantic faith come off as contrived from the get go, suffer further thanks to the performer’s total lack of dramatic range, and resolve themselves in a programmatic ending that’s completely unearned.
Put on your helmets, there’s falling meta in the synopsis tunnel: Yi plays herself (we can only assume), and Jake Johnson plays Nicholas Jasenovec, the real director of the film, who is seen on camera briefly. Charlyne says she doesn’t know if she believes in love, and certainly has never been in it, so she and Jasenovec (the one played by Johnson) set out to make a comic road trip doc so that Charlyne can present her questions on the subject to a number of experts and Real Live Americans. Presumably, the idea is to do something kind of like Religulous, but with more bittersweet remembering and a lot less yelling.
But shortly after Nicholas’ camera crew starts following Charlyne everywhere she goes, Michael Cera starts blatantly hitting on her at a party. The next thing you know, they’re sharing a romantic dinner at a hot dog stand, which is as adorable as it sounds. Soon enough, when Charlyne and Nicholas aren’t off in some squarish state learning lessons in love from current and former motorcycle owners, Charlyne’s spending all her time in Los Angeles with Michael, learning different lessons in love, the kind that can only be taught by a barely legal dreamboat. All is going swell until Charlyne’s articulates her lingering fear of intimacy at an inopportune moment, apparently in order to give the film something resembling the standard romantic comedy’s narrative arc. You can guess what happens next; I’ll only say there is dreamy guitar playing, and kisses.
Yi’s comedic schtick is effective in small doses — see her web shorts, particularly the music videos. But a feature-length helping offers plenty of time to contemplate what makes the schtick tick, and it eventually becomes clear that it’s equal parts sound, image and vacancy. Her voice has one mode: a high-pitched squeal. Small, slightly hunched, completely lacking vanity in a standard uniform of unkempt ponytail and too-big pullovers, Yi’s look is so distinctly tomboy preteen that it’s a shock when, at one point, she pulls out a set of car keys. Most crucially, most of Yi’s comedy is based on a kind of blankness, a goofy grin topped by poker-neutral eyes. She doesn’t want you to know what she’s thinking, otherwise the joke doesn’t work.
This is a fatal quality to bring into a film which needs the audience to care about its leading lady’s romantic future. Filmed romance only works if a single shot of the hero or heroine tells you everything you need to know about what they think and feel. In Paper Heart, Charlyne Yi actually tells us everything she thinks we need to know about what she thinks and feels — in nails-on-chalkboard monotone, without altering her facial expression. The Cera/Yi thread thus brings down the rest of the movie, which is otherwise a meandering but charming and fully engaging meditation on the wisdom of romantic experience.
There are a few things right with Paper Heart, and they can all be found in those road trip interviews, where Yi hangs back and allows her subjects to tell their own stories. But the scene which embodies everything that’s wrong with Paper Heart comes towards the end, when Yi interviews a group of pre-tween kids on a playground. Of course, they’re wiser about the ways of the heart than the “adult” holding the microphone in their faces; of course, the point is that, emotionally, Yi is less mature than kids less than half her age. But there’s a point where emotional immaturity, neurosis, and social awkwardness border on pathology. Which is fine, except that unexamined pathology is not very romantic.
Paper Heart is not smart enough to critique Yi’s issues, and it can’t work as a romance without doing so. All of which wouldn’t matter if it was super funny. But it isn’t.
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