The Paperboy

Up until the wee hours watching The Paperboy, the movie Winter's Bone would have been if it had been scripted by Tennessee Williams and directed by John Waters. I LUVED it unabashedly! Southern Gothic at its most brilliant and over the top.

Word of caution: This is not a movie for everyone. People who don't get it are gonna hate it a lot.

I see by the liner notes that the movie is adapted from a novel by Pete Dexter, which just has me reeling! I always think of Dexter as such a spare, elegiac writer. Though I suppose Hillary van Wetter is a demonic bad guy in the classic tradition of Paris Trout.

The action takes place in the late 1960s in the town of Lately (!), Florida. Ward Jansen, a newspaper reporter who blew the town as quickly as possible after growing up there, returns – with a black sidekick named Yardley Acheman and a mission: to prove Hillary van Wetter, denizen of the local swamps, was unjustly framed for the murder of a sheriff that took place a decade before.

Ward is the son of the local newspaper owner. Ward's brother Jack – the titular "paperboy" – is an 18 year old who's just been kicked out of college and spends his time stalking around the house in his underwear and being chastised by Anita, the family's black maid, who also serves as the Omniscient Narrator. Ward enlists Jack's aid to drive him to and from the prison where Hillary van Wetter is incarcerated.

Matthew McConaughey plays Ward Jansen. I must say, I'd pay $15 for a first run movie ticket just to hear Matthew McConaughey drawl in that strange indefinable Southern accent of his, slippery as okra. Fortunately, thanks to Ben's Netflix account, I don't have to! Zac Effren plays Jack Jansen. He pouts a lot and out-Marky Mark's Mark Wahlberg's original Calvin Klein underwear ads, making The Paperboy perfect aversion therapy for anyone who's still fixated on High School Musical. Macy Gray is very good as Anita. Who knew she could act?

Ward, Yardley and Jack are joined by Charlotte Bless, a woman who has been corresponding with Hillary van Wetter in prison and is determined to marry him.

Nicole Kidman plays Charlotte, and she is fucking brilliant. As an aside, I've never really warmed to Nicole Kidman – even a decade after The Divorce, she's still got major Tom Cruise cooties. (People who make the mistake of supposing that actors are human beings will not understand this aversion, I suppose. We know better, don't we?) One arched eyebrow more and Kidman would have tottered over into Mickey Spillane paperback cover territory, but she was note perfect playing Charlotte, the backwoods slut who sets her cap for the man behind the bars.

My boyfriend John Cusack plays Hillary van Wetter. From a boyfriend point of view, I prefer John when he is making puppy eyes at Ione Skye or bashing Dan Ackroyd over the head with a TV. He is genuinely menacing in this, again a finely nuanced performance because one wrong note and the whole thing would lurch into high comedy.

Indeed, the film is extremely funny because of the clever ways it uses various movie clichés. But you're laughing because you're in on an extremely sophisticated, multi-layer joke.

Practically every scene in this is a small well–thought out gem, but two scenes in particular stand out.

The first is the scene When Charlotte Meets Hillary in the prison waiting room… So over the top, your mouth literally falls open. Take this, you coy Basic Instinct pervs, the director seems to be saying. The scene is mesmerizing, disturbing, exhilerating and also very, very funny.

Then there's that other scene when Scott Glenn is, uh, interacting with an alligator while he's casually chatting with Ward and Jack.

Anyway, I totally loved The Paperboy. I want to send Lee Daniels a bouquet of orange blossoms. Or something. I will note in passing that there are holes in the plot large enough to drive your Daddy's badass Dodge Ram through, but then plot is not the point of this film.