Paper Man

Richard Dunne moves into a beach house his wife has arranged so he can write a novel. The book does not move; he is fifty, his first novel did not sell, and he cannot get a sentence down. He has one companion: Captain Excellent, the imaginary friend left over from his childhood, in a cape, full of advice, and visible to nobody. Then a high-school girl called Abby turns up around the house and Richard asks her to be his friend. The hardest thing about the film is the pitch of that relationship: the closeness between a fifty-year-old man and a seventeen-year-old girl is not romantic but it is not healthy either, and the story deliberately leaves it uncomfortable. Abby has her own loss, and the two do not heal each other, they only carry each other for a while. Kieran and Michele Mulroney wrote it and Kieran Mulroney directed. Jeff Daniels plays Richard, Ryan Reynolds plays Captain Excellent, Emma Stone plays Abby and Lisa Kudrow the wife. The Captain Excellent device is dropped after a point, and that is a good decision: the imaginary friend is written as an obstacle rather than a solution. Who it is for: anyone who likes small American independent drama and odd pairings. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear story. The narrative is scattered, the supporting characters are left half done, and the film never settles its tone.