The concise critics

Paper Planes

Year : 2015 Director : Robert Connolly Running Time : 96 minutes Genre :
Movie review score
2.5/5

What’s it about?

Dylan and his father are both stuck in a rut, searching for some sort of escape from their demons. When Dylan discovers a flair for paper plane construction he’s encouraged to participate in the national paper plane heats.

What we thought

Dan says: You’ve seen this film before with ice hockey (Mighty Ducks), lawn bowls (Crackerjack), golf (Tin Cup), karate (Karate Kid), the list goes on and on. I’m a sucker for this tale no matter how many times it’s told and so it was that I was disappointing to find myself checking my watch only thirty minutes in. The writing and the filmmaking is below par and feels like the very worst episodes of Secret Valley. The actors flail through the woeful dialogue as best they can but there’s little chance of saving it. Deborah Mailman and David Wenham are criminally underused.

You’ll find yourself rolling your eyes more than once and the worst part is that there’s some really nice moments hidden away here. Ed Oxbould and Sam Worthington do a beautiful job and a few more rewrites could have picked this up and out of the mud.

Appropriately, his film has wings, but no steering.

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