See It or Skip It: 'Paper Heart'

What do you get when you mix Juno and The Hills?

Paper Heart, is a mockumentary/documentary starring Charlyne Yi, an LA based performance artist, occasional actress and girlfriend of Michael Cera, the film’s other star, as she tries to uncover what love is, how you find it and if it’s even real.

Aggressively quirky and practiced in the art of hipster perfection, Yi’s bread and butter is her awkward, spazzy delivery. It can wear thin but it works as a counter point to a film devoted to a concept that could easily become schmaltzy. While the film loses its footing when it ventures into a more theatrical narrative focused on Yi and her overt, seemingly practiced idiosyncrasies, it shines when the cameras hit the road to ask civilians what love means to them.

From Vegas wedding chapels to Texas divorce courts to an Atlanta playground (yes, little girl, true love is a date to Applebee’s for chicken wings), Paper Heart is at its best when it lets real life take the driver’s seat. Reminiscent of the segments in When Harry Met Sally, Yi interviews people who reveal the moment they found, lost or realized true love and those stories are re-enacted with DIY puppets and sets (like a blue Saran Wrap river or a brown paper bag puppet face) in a quaint, charming, off-beat way. 

The film has moments that are undeniably funny, sweet and disarming, but, much like Yi, it would simply have been better without any manipulation. We don’t want to watch The Hills: Hipster Heaven. Who needs to create storylines when you’ve got Harley-riding Oklahoma barflies explaining that real love is the family you find at a tavern or a romance novelist describing what readers crave?

We want to love Paper Heart…but we’re afraid we can’t commit to feelings that strong.

But we hope we can still be friends.