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
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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