Good On Paper(Netflix)
Starring Iliza Shlesinger, Ryan Hansen, Margaret Cho, and Rebecca Rittenhouse
Directed by Kimmy Gatewood
Rating: ***
There are some films that on the surface ,seem shallow and unremarkable. But when you scratch the surface, you get a film that is constantly alert to the witticism that underlines the dating game if you only care to look at the lighter side of the mating ritual.
Okay, how many out there have seen someone close to them being in a relationship that is doomed from the outset? Please raise your hands. I can see a lot of hands going up in the air. Now watch our heroine Andrea(played by real-life stand-up comic Ileza Schlesinger) as she gets deeper and deeper into a web of deceit created by Dennis(Ryan Hansen).
From the moment Dennis insinuates himself into Andrea’s life at the airport lounge ,we know it is only a matter time before the bubble bursts.
The fun part of a film that is totally against love at first sight, begins when Andrea and her best friend Margot(Margaret Cho) start spying on Dennis. One by one all his lies come undone, and Andrea is looking at a man who is not only a pathological liar but probably dangerous too.Specially hilarious is a golf game where the self-proclaimed golf pro Dennis suddenly falls to the ground with a back pain.
Seriously?
It’s so easy for the rest of the world to see thought Dennis. But not Andrea who is otherwise a practical level-headed self-motivated woman of the world.So the question again: what gravitates intelligent women towards men who are charlatans? By the time Good On Paper answers this question we are well into the last act of this revenge drama. The last act is in fact the least likeable , most bluntly misandrist.
I mean you don’t take your best friend’s help to kidnap the man who has hoodwinked you , tie him up to a chair and torture him like a petty thief in a thana.Life is not a film, even in a film.
I mean, grow up! This is serious business.Happily Good On Paper never takes itself so seriously as to lose its way in sermonizing. A large part of the fun comes from real-life stand-up Iliza Shlesinger playing a thinly-veiled version of her own self on screen. She is confident and cocky and yet so misguided in love.
It would be heartbreaking were it not so funny.
