Diablo Cody's Skewed View Of 'Paradise'

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 18, 2013 7:00PM

Russell Brand, Julianne Hough and Octavia Spencer in Paradise

It's always nice to see a local girl rise to the top of the film industry so quickly, isn't it? After her critically praised writing debut with Juno in 2007, Diablo Cody has churned out a number of follow-ups that focus on central female characters who are daringly crafted. Not everyone likes Cody's vision, but we've always appreciated her dedication to creating characters that might not be sympathetic but get you to feel for them nonetheless.

Paradise—in limited release this weekend in theaters and available as a video on demand—is Cody's directing debut, so the movie is her whole baby from conception through completion. It focuses on Lamb Mannerhelm (Julianne Hough), a young girl brought up in a cloistered religious community who loses her faith after suffering disfiguring burns in a plane crash. She decides to go on a quest to discover the more sinful pleasures of the world so she of course heads straight to Las Vegas where an overly sexed bartender (Russell Brand), a cynical waitress / singer (Octavia Spencer) and a helpful prostitute (Kathleen Rose Perkins) act as her guides. Holly Hunter and a stunningly unrecognizable Nick Offerman—we didn't even realize it was him until he speaks near the end of the film—make brief appearances as Lamb's parents.

With such a grab-bag of morally dubious characters bouncing off the central Lamb, we would expect Cody to travel the road less taken and present us with some twisted scenarios that push the limits of the central themes of lost faith. What we get instead is a modern day Wizard Of Oz minus the Wicked Witch. Brand and Spencer do all they can with their characters but they end up being so one dimensional and flimsy they can do no better than make them likable caricatures. And Hough does a good job of making Lamb as believable as she can, but in the end questions are too neatly answered and the resolution is too tidy to make us feel her journey was realistically meaningful.

We can't understand why Cody pulled so many punches and took so few chances here, and this movie is disappointing primarily due to the high expectations leading to it through her previous work.

You can see Paradise in the Chicagoland area this weekend at AMC Loews Streets Of Woodfield 20, 601 N. Martingale Road, in Schaumburg