The Paperboy
Millennium Entertainment | Release Date: October 5, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
14
Negative:
11
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 29, 2012
Nicole Kidman gives her best performance since "To Die For." Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 29, 2012
In the spirit of the venture, the entire cast gets down and comes off all the better for it. Both Efron and McConaughey get very messed up physically, and both actors seem stimulated to be playing such flawed characters. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisOct 11, 2012
I've never seen a movie like this. Not on purpose. Daniels isn't saying he's tasteful. He's just saying that his tasteless trash is as deserving of our attention as the tasteful trash we feel like we have to see. The whole thing's a crazy fantasy, like watching a porno dream it can win the Oscar. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 11, 2012
The Paperboy is over-the-top every which way you look. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 7, 2012
Gator-filled swamps, an ultra-grungy murderer, racial undertones and a sexually charged atmosphere make up the tense and lurid world of The Paperboy. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertOct 3, 2012
The Paperboy is great trash, and as Pauline Kael told us, the movies are so seldom great art that if we can't appreciate great trash, we might as well not go at all. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyOct 4, 2012
There is such unflinching passion in the piece that The Paperboy deserves to be seen even though it can feel almost as flawed as its characters. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazineAmy NicholsonOct 3, 2012
This is a curio that demands to be seen. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJonathan KieferOct 2, 2012
When not contriving to get Efron out of his clothes, The Paperboy gropes for familiar movie language of its period setting: Soul music swells up excitedly over a jumble of jerky zooms, befuddling cuts, and spatial vagueness. But sometimes hot messiness has its charms. Read full review
70
TimeMary CorlissSep 29, 2012
All the actors rise or bend to the challenge, giving juicy performances and seemingly having a fine old time. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 3, 2012
Much of what happens in The Paperboy is so luridly bizarre you can't quite believe what you're seeing. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 4, 2012
This hot mess got booed by the snobs at Cannes, but there's no denying its profane energy. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 3, 2012
There are some splendidly over-the-top performances - chiefly those of Nicole Kidman and John Cusack, both cast against type - but the biggest narrative hole lies at the center. The lead character, played by Zac Efron, is dull, uninteresting, and poorly conceived. Read full review
60
EmpireAngie ErrigoMar 11, 2013
A superb Kidman takes off the handbrake, and most everything else, in Daniels' southern-fried follow-up to "Precious." Watch it with "Killer Joe" for the ultimate sweaty, twisted double-bill. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamFeb 16, 2013
A grindhouse mix of "Wild Things," "Killer Joe" and "Streetcar Named Desire," The Paperboy won’t be for all. But it boasts a soupy atmosphere and Kidman’s best turn for years. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 23, 2012
"Southern fried" is as good a phrase as any to describe The Paperboy...It fits, really, because it causes the same reaction. You eat a mess of fried okra or tater tots, and it's tasty going down. It's only after you're done that you feel a little queasy. [18 Oct 2012]
60
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 4, 2012
While the portrayal of Southern race relations in the '60s is less central here than in "The Help," it's also less labored and earnest, and one could argue that it's subtler, more intimate and more honest. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianStan HallOct 11, 2012
While Daniels' work disappoints, his film is saved from disaster by uniformly terrific performances. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenOct 24, 2012
Most of the performances are good in a flailing sort of way, and McConaughey, especially, is a standout in this year of his reinvention. Despite all its garish accoutrements and salacious underpinnings, The Paperboy can be a hoot to watch. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenOct 18, 2012
The Paperboy is southern Gothic wallowing in the swamp of low camp. And if the wallowing were deliberate, this might have been hugely funny. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 4, 2012
The movie itself is a tad overheated. In the lurid, swampy, yet almost perversely engrossing follow-up to director Lee Daniels's "Precious," the temperature is set to "sizzle." Ironically, it could have used a little more time in the oven. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 4, 2012
It is by turns lurid, humid, florid, languid and stupid, but it is pretty much all id all the time. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 4, 2012
To say The Paperboy doesn't work is one thing; to say it's dull is a lie. This movie is berserk, which is more interesting than "eh." Read full review
50
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundOct 2, 2012
The Paperboy deserves to be seen for its pulpy, well-executed excess, but as a filmmaker, Lee Daniels seems ignorant of how the shocks distract from the story. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyOct 7, 2012
The movie is messily ineffective. Daniels likes charged, discordant scenes, with sudden explosions of violence. He shoves the camera in people's faces, and he can't convincingly stage a scene with more than two people in it. [8 Oct. 2012, p.86]
40
MovielineAlison WillmoreOct 4, 2012
The Paperboy is a nutty movie in terms of content, but it's also assembled in a demented fashion - there's a sense that literally anything could happen, and that its raunchy, heat-dazed story could wander down any path without regard to sense or an overall narrative. Read full review
40
Time OutEric HynesOct 2, 2012
The problem is that the filmmaker brings D-grade craft to these B-movie exertions, making his florid maximalism more entertaining to talk about than endure - despite the best efforts of his ardently slumming A-list cast. Read full review
33
IndieWireEric KohnOct 4, 2012
Lee Daniels' The Paperboy is a rare case of serious commitment to outright silliness. Read full review
30
VarietyJustin ChangOct 4, 2012
A risibly overheated, not unenjoyable slab of late-'60s Southern pulp trash, marked by a sticky, sweaty atmosphere of delirium and sexual frustration that only partly excuses the woozy ineptitude of the filmmaking. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezOct 11, 2012
Despite all the freaky business on display - and there are moments here when you cannot believe your eyes - The Paperboy suffocates you with boredom like a hot, wet blanket. You want to push it away and escape. It makes sleaze boring. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithOct 5, 2012
The Paperboy can't decide whether to be an unfunny sex comedy, a half-hearted detective story or a woeful race drama - so it decides to be all three, then becomes yet another movie (a swampy "Heart of Darkness") in the final act. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinOct 3, 2012
So why is The Paperboy so bizarrely dull? It's as if the filmmakers combined 18 different kinds of scalding-hot peppers, yet inexplicably emerged with oatmeal. Read full review
20
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottNov 2, 2012
This is the kind of film that feels like a dream - but not in the good way. Rather, it resembles a dream in that it is made up of disjointed, loosely connected bits of surrealist craziness - ideas that might have seemed interesting in the twilight hours but that don't come close to standing up to the light of day. Read full review
20
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriOct 6, 2012
It offers a deranged hodgepodge of tones and acting styles and strange mannerisms and affectations and narrative dead ends that feels like it was assembled by a committee of bipolar extraterrestrials. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierOct 4, 2012
It is likely to become an unintended camp classic, something we haven't had since "Showgirls." Read full review
10
NPRScott TobiasOct 5, 2012
The words "florid" and "inert" are not quite antonyms, but it would nonetheless seem impossible for those two adjectives to apply to the same thing. And yet here comes The Paperboy, a swamp noir so spectacularly incompetent that even the ripest pulp attractions are left to rot in the sun, flies buzzing lazily around them. Read full review
0
ObserverRex ReedOct 2, 2012
This raunchy dreck, cut from the same disposable toilet tissue as the recent trailer-trash creepfest "Killer Joe," is a leap downhill from "Precious." Read full review
0
The PlaylistJames RocchiSep 29, 2012
A lurid, florid, humid, flaccid and insipid waste of time and money for the audience and for everyone who made it. Read full review
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