Holy Crap: 'The Paperboy'

This is a ridiculous film -- from the illogical plot to the hit-and-miss direction to the giddy performances -- but it's also creepy, guilty fun. I should have turned it off before it was half over; when it ended I wanted to immediately watch it again. Ostensibly it's the tale of some half-assed newspaper reporters in the swamps of Florida determined to put together an expose that will clear a wrongly convicted killer of a local sheriff. But really, it's director Lee Daniels' acid trip through Pete Dexter's novel.

On a basic level, this one works as an homage to late-'60s and early-'70s B movies. But when it goes off the rails, as it often does, it can seem like a hokey hot mess. At its best, it gives off a vibe of "Deer Hunter" meets "Deliverance." At its worst, it's "Alligator" played straight, without the wink, or a very special episode of "Flipper."

But it's the performances that will make you love it or leave it.

* Nicole Kidman plays a bleach-blond ("This wig ain't actin' right") bimbo with a thing for convicts and whose attempts to be chaste inevitably end with resignation along the lines of "Well, OK, just this once." She looks like someone forgot to tell Goldie Hawn that "Laugh-In" was canceled. She seems consumed by desire and guilt throughout. It's a juicy, riveting performance that drags the rest of the cast along, panting in her wake.

* Matthew McConaughey is uncharacteristically off-key throughout.

* David Oyelowo, as the anglofied black reporter suffering repeated racist outbursts,also suffers late in the movie from the corniest character reveal you've ever seen.

* Zac Efron mopes about, often in his white undies, pining for Kidman's Charlotte and flirting quasi-incestuously with the family's nanny/maid.

* Scott Glenn riffs solely on a bad haircut, reveling in the waning days before the wet-head was officially declared dead.

* Macy Gray holds it all together as the narrating maid/nanny and voice of reason, rescuing what could have been a thankless role straight out of "The Help" and giving the film its only true sense of gravitas.

* But the Oscar goes to . . . John Cusack as the death-row inmate (say that phrase out loud), who in a swampy movie full of sweaty people comes off as by far the sweatiest -- not so much a deranged psychopath but more like a delirious flu-sufferer hallucinating his way through a 105-degree fever. And his name is Hillary Van Wetter. (Try that one aloud, too.) I imagine Nicolas Cage watching this performance and thinking "That's just crazy!"

Bubbling throughout is a depiction of newspaper work that is less plausible than you'd find in an episode of "Superman"; it's as if Woodward and Bernstein were shipwrecked on Gilligan's Island.

And, of course, Kidman pees on Efron at the beach. . . . Because he was stung by a jellyfish. . . . Because ... well there's no salient connection between this incident and the rest of the movie, no point whatsoever; I think Daniels just wanted to film Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron. And I'm fine with that.

If you don't care that this all makes little sense, and if you groove on the sights, sounds, fashions and colors of my TV childhood, you just might get swept up by this nutty piece of trash.

Did I mention that John Cusack plays the death-row inmate?

GRADE: B . . . (I guess)