The comic book genre has come a long way since the dark and brooding Batman films of Tim Burton and the statuesque Christopher Reeve in Superman and its sequels, notably the second one by Richard Donner. Sure, the occasional Barb Wire, The Crow, the Blade trilogy, or The Walking Dead has come along, but most comic book movies or tv shows have been about superheroes. That has all changed recently with the new show from Amazon Prime called Paper Girls.
The show starts with four teenage girls Mac (Sofia Rosinsky), Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany (Camryn Jones) and KJ (Fina Strazza), getting ready to deliver their newspapers the morning after Halloween in 1988. While on their newspaper routes, they see purple lightning in the sky. They go to check out the phenomenon on their bikes. What happens next is crazy. They inadvertently get involved in a war between two groups of warring time travelers. One group is the resistance, and the other is the law.
This show is based on the comic book series by Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang. Vaughn is no stranger to getting his series turned into films. He wrote the Kick-Ass and Kingsman series, both of which became movies. All the episodes have a familiar look to them not to confuse the audience. This is due to good directing, writing, and cinematography. Paper Girls is produced by Legendary, which is no stranger to spectacle films, so this show was going to look good no matter if it was bad or good. It’s pretty good, though. It kind of has a realistic look to it, like a Michael Mann film.
One of the things that makes this show entertaining and engaging is the relationship between the four girls. They all have different motivations and attitudes towards the world, making them not always get along with each other. They come from different backgrounds and are of different races and sexual orientations, and so forth. They are really a different subsection of the country as a whole. A lot of girls their age, I think, will gravitate towards this show in different ways. With school getting started in August, this might be a popular show for teenage girls to watch, and if they like it, they can tell their friends.
There is a sci-fi aspect to this show: time travel. This show does a pretty good job of dealing with this popular trope. I feel time traveling has been overdone in Hollywood, but this show deals with it in an exciting way. These girls need help to get back home and how they figure out how and who they can trust and not trust is the main focus of the show. Along the way, they learn a lot about each other. Back to the Future comes to mind when I think of how the story unfolds, but it’s done very well. And writers should learn from Vaughn on this point.
Paper Girls was a lot of fun. Before I started watching the show, I hadn’t heard of the comic book series from Chaing and Vaughn. It just had an interesting premise, and it seemed cool to me. I’m glad I gave it a chance now because I really enjoyed it a lot. The sci-fi aspect, including the time travel, was good, but the four girls and their relationship, good and bad, throughout the show was the driving force for me. These young actresses were outstanding and kept me engaged with them throughout their ups and downs in the series. I think many girls their age will gravitate to this show for a good reason they can relate to them as well.
4 stars
Dan Skip Allen
Sean Boelman Founder/EIC disappointment media
From the Fourth Row! 