Review: PARADISE
Lamb Mannerheim’s faith is shaken after a plane crash burns two-thirds of her body, and she shocks her small-town congregation when she publicly renounces God and sets out to experience the worldly pleasures of Las Vegas.
Diablo Cody has been more hit than miss for me over the years. JUNO was pretentious, douchey, and overwritten so much it actually seemed unique and watchable. JENNIFER’S BODY was way better than it deserved to be, which isn’t saying much but I really don’t get some of the hatred towards that film. YOUNG ADULT, on the other hand, was fantastic. It was obvious Diablo had grown up as a writer and delivered one of the best dark comedies I had seen in a while. Is she ready for the director’s chair? Let’s see.
I’m pretty certain that I’m never going to like Julianne Hough. From her way-too-old-to-be-a-high-school-girl performance(?) in FOOTLOOSE to her dizzy-yet-innocent annoyance in ROCK OF AGES, the woman constantly rubs me the wrong way. It doesn’t help any matters here when her character is basically just a mash-up of the two women she played in the aforementioned films. She’s just a small town lady who isn’t allowed to dance, or wear shorts. She wants to stop fearing God and move to a big city and sin a whole lot. This after surviving a plane crash and winning a huge settlement. Her skin graphs and scars leave her even more fragile than most little girls in Vegas. Cody could have really made Hough into one of those fish-out-of-water cliches the moment she turns up in Sin City but holds off and makes her likable, if only for the first third of the film.
Russell Brand, another guy I can stand less and less as the world turns, shows up as a Las Vegas bartender with a good heart and some funny one-liners. Octavia Spencer is angry, then drunk, then sweet, then all-knowing and wise as Loray, another good-hearted Vegas local.
Here’s the problem with PARADISE – it’s too sappy. It was nice for Diablo Cody to grow up so quickly as a writer but somewhere down the line she forgot that mid-career plateau and skipped ahead to the rainbow cheesiness and pukey happy endings. Her direction is decent enough, I suppose, but none of it matters when the writing isn’t up to par.
There’s no connection with the three leads of this film. Hough, Brand, and Spencer take all of 15 minutes to become lifelong best friends and manage to rush all the drama of those relationships into a solid hour. Trying to get a feel for all three characters and what their history is seems fake, forced, and useless.
By the time you figure out that this isn’t a romantic comedy a couple things happen. My first reaction was “Hmph….. That wasn’t as predictable as I thought.” And then “But what was the fucking point?” Kudos to Cody for not giving Hough a musical scene (kinda). The constant dread that she’s going to break out in a song and dance is unbearable with this woman.
Paradise is in theaters today (October 18th)
Rating: 4/10