archergal918 Never heard of this film, and here in 2018 I came across it on a streaming service. I decided to give it a watch because of the cast - some of my favorites including Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds and Lisa Kudrow. Emma Stone is quite special in her role as a young lady with so many cares in this world. Jeff Daniels is at his very disarming best, I think. I laughed out loud many a time, mostly with Captain Excellent (oh Ryan, you have such great comic timing). If you've ever felt a bit lost in life and wondered what now, I think you'll find kindred spirits in this lovely film.

adi_2002 A writer with no inspiration and no friends starts a friendly relationship with a local girl. He asks her if she could come to his house and be a babysitter but it seems there is no baby to look out for. Although her charges are expensive the writer is willing to pay her for the provided services. Once in a while her wife passes by and misunderstands her relation with the young girl and soon the two begins to argue. So the movie is humble, the type that doesn't reach anywhere. Lack of variety in locations, characters or the story witch don't develop make it a little boring at a time. Also the mains character imaginary superhero friend removes the film seriousness, I mean this can happen only if you are a child but seeing him on his kid bike and spending so much time among teens does not fall far from the truth. Final words it's watchable for those who don't mind to watch the same scenario all over again and they do not have any new expectations from it.

Neil Welch Richard (Jeff Daniels) is a published but unsuccessful writer, married to successful doctor Claire (Lisa Kudrow). The marriage is in low-key trouble because Richard is floundering, both in his writing and in life in general, as is made clear by the fact that he is accompanied by his childhood imaginary friend, super-hero Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds). As an unspoken measure of last resort, Richard goes to a holiday cabin to try to find his muse: instead, he finds Abby (Emma Stone), a youngster with issues of her own. A relationship grows between Richard and Abby, but it may well cause more problems that it solves.Despite its relatively high profile cast, and despite the fact that I am an enthusiastic cinema-goer and film follower, I had never heard of this film under either its original title of Paper Man or the title under which I found it in the Pound Shop, Unlikely Hero. Add the fact that it appears to have been re-marketed as a quasi-super-hero movie, and I was unprepared for what followed.The story is gentle and leisurely, but quite dark at times. It is not even slightly a comedy despite the DVD case giving that impression. Daniels gives Richard an air of affability, a mechanism he uses to compensate for his inability to deal with life: this makes it a little too easy to overlook how good his performance is.But this is Emma Stone's film: she is wonderful.

DeusExKatrina Some reviews seem to have pegged this as a mere indie romp, the quirky, gushy type that hasn't felt novel since the mid-00s. That tag doesn't quite do Paper Man justice. Sure, the surface style is a bit derivative. We've seen older men forging an inappropriate relationship with a high school girl before (Juno, American Beauty), and we've seen plenty of cutesy indie films about 20-something would-be-artistes struggling to grow up and get a real job (Flakes, for one). But this movie is quite a bit more deranged than all that. These characters aren't merely eccentric, their idiosyncrasies hover well past the line into downright pathology.First we have our protagonist. Not a disillusioned 20-something hipster, he's a man well into middle age who has no real job, no social skills and still clings to a (sometimes abusive) imaginary friend. Somehow this man with no prospects and no skills is married to a successful surgeon who isolates her maladjusted, delusional, slacker husband up in a rural cabin believing that -- somehow -- leaving him to his own devices and letting him run amok in solitude will help to repair his crippling mental state. Finally we come to Abby, a teenage girl so desperate for companionship that she tolerates a neglectful slob of a boyfriend, a deranged, obsessive stalker who follows her wherever she goes, and a middle-aged married man who lures her to his empty house under the guise of a babysitting job. Her response to being set-up by this pervert? She makes him soup. If her parents exist, they don't much concern themselves with her, and she has no other acquaintances.This is an intriguing character study with some decent heart to be found. It's fascinating to explore these broken individuals and the movie's definitely worth a watch. Unfortunately, the courage with which these characters were created is not matched by the movie's highly formulaic ending, which largely glosses over their more serious instabilities. However, with so many otherwise solid indie projects these days ending abruptly with far too little closure (Not Fade Away, Palo Alto), I'm willing to accept a little undue schmaltz from Paper Man. The cast also garners mentioning. With Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Lisa Kudrow and Jeff Daniels, they couldn't have put together a better ensemble for this film. The performances are entertaining enough just on their own merits.