Review of Paper Moon (1973) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 13 Dec 2018

Tatum O'Neal's acting debut is undoubtedly impressive, but it's the chemistry between her and her real-life father Ryan O'Neal that just blew me away. Honestly, I couldn't help thinking about Charlie Chaplin and Jack Coogan from The Kid!

The ending is a tad bit predictable, though. Nevertheless, the execution is pretty exquisite that kept me from being very sure about how the movie will end. Also, the ending is as heartwarming and sweet as the whole movie. So, it's not really a big problem.

What amazed me is how smartly scripted this movie is. The way the problems are solved in the plot is genius. The main characters keep get in troubles a lot through their journey, and they get out of them in a convincing and intelligent way. But it's also silly and ridiculous at the same time to match the nostalgic approach that Peter Bogdanovich took from the get-go. That's really a lesson that many directors and screenwriters should learn nowadays; which is that when they decide to capture the essence of a bygone cinematic era, they have to make their film relevant to a modern audience by making it seem smarter and more sensible, hence more convincing.

Every sub-plot is consistent, amusing, and really adds to the characters and the main storyline. The sub-plot of Trixie also has no shortage of brilliance and fun, but I think it didn't need to be that long. It felt like that it was a pitfall that the screenwriter fell into, but didn't want to get out of it in an unconvincing and flimsy way so he had to take his time planning a reasonable and plausible way. That said, I enjoyed every second of this very sub-plot as much as the entire movie.

Paper Moon is simply a thoroughly engaging, very moving and touching, quite charming, surprisingly clever and sincere ode to Depression-era road movies.