Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Paperman is Terribly Insulting!

I'll have more to say about The Oscars after I watch Life of Pi, but until then, this is all I have to say.

Seth MacFarlane was a really funny host. In fact, he was so funny, it made me wonder where that Seth was while Ted was being made.

Argo is a really good movie. Not my choice for movie of the year, especially when I feel like Zero Dark Thirty or Django Unchained were more bold and daring and even more important.

Brave winning for best animated feature is....ummm.....surprising. It was good, but every other movie that was nominated was better. Wreck-It Ralph seemed like it would have been the more suitable choice, but maybe the old guys voting felt like it wasn't good enough for being about video games(just speculating).

Alright, so, let's get to the angry part...


Paperman makes me mad....I mean, really mad!

I didn't mind it too much when I first saw it. It's got a really good art style....and that's as far as my appreciation goes for this thing. But then it got popular, people were getting emotionally touched by it, and now I can't stop thinking about it. How can people be so emotionally invested into one of the most superficial and, quite frankly, insulting love stories I have ever seen?

I guess it makes sense, though. The whole thing hits the right notes for the general public. First we have a guy who is your average guy and there's nothing really that special about him, but he's generically cute looking. He's got those big Disney Eyes, a modest looking smile, a sort of boyish messy set of hair, and a really big nose. The woman? Well, she's a mutated science experiment where pretty much everything about her is to make her look as gorgeous as possible.

Seriously, if you ever meet a woman who looks like that, get the heck out of there, because she's probably a robot assassin....and she's after YOU!

But this is a Disney cartoon, so we can trust her.

The entire story of the short: They first meet, they have a slightly amusing interaction, and while the guy turns his head for a brief second, the woman magically teleports on the bus without saying anything. And, against all odds, they some how meet together again. The stuff that happens doesn't really matter, it just matters that it was against all odds.

There, we're attached to these characters, we see the guy wishing he can meet her again, making us feel sympathetic, and then he does, giving people that warm and fuzzy feeling. My problem is that it blatantly hits all of those notes to make you feel the way you do by the end of it.

The reason why I feel like it's insulting is how the guy treats the entire situation. He probably lost his job because of what he did and it's all for someone who could be a robot assassin for all we know.....and she's after HIM!

Yep, let's keep that attitude going for everybody and start turning people into idiots.

It doesn't help that every other animated short was better than this one! You want to talk about clever? How about The Longest Daycare. How about something that's even better looking? Adam and Dog. Want something really wacky? Fresh Guacamole is probably going to be one of the weirdest but one of the cleverest things you'll ever see. How about another love story that's actually more meaningful and actually has things to say? Head Over Heels.

It just makes me mad to see what people seem to be getting out of this. "It's okay to abandon all logic and reason if it's for the sake of love." Fine, I know that's not what people are saying, but those are the implications. 


If this didn't get so much attention, I wouldn't have even cared. I would have just remembered as a very beautiful looking piece of work, and that would have been it. But, then, people had to twist it into being more than just an empty, meaningless shell, though, a very good looking shell. But, then, these are the same people who nominated Les Miserables for Movie of the Year.

Call me bitter, but I hope their relationship turns out to be a massive train wreck.

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