Review of Paranoid Park (2007) by Shawn P — 24 Aug 2011

This film aspires to be something deeper than it really is. There's lots of brooding, awkward silence, festering hurt, etc, etc, but not much more. It's a stylized examination of a crime that is actually minimized in its severity and shock value by way of anticlimactic storytelling.

In the end I left the theater with no fresh insight and no sense of fulfillment. In fact, I'd say I was in the somnambulent state that the protaganist exhibits throughout the fim's 84 minutes, lost in the thought of how I might get those 84 minutes back.