Amazon Prime’s Paper Girls review: A beautifully written time-travel story

Aside from the current influx of edgy nursery rhyme pop remixes, the worst thing that can happen to childhood is arguably the swift and humble devastation of adulthood. Daydream becomes like a job seeker hungry for a master’s degree. Music of Youth — My favorite is Ashlee Simpson’s debut album, autobiography (Pre-Lip Sync Scandal) — Over time it becomes the uncool old stuff of a kid your age, a dusty relic pointing to the Mesozoic Era when iPods didn’t have screens.This is the central conundrum paper girls: Why is my old self so dull? My older apartment doesn’t have a Nobel Prize winner or even a laundry unit. And why are we still borrowing? The tough answer to all these inquiries is an echo of your own question. Adulthood sucks because you can’t care about your dreams and desires. It simply looms over you forever. It’s like tax season.

Amazon’s paper girls, A somewhat faithful adaptation of the beloved comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chan, it explores girlhood, uncertainty, and ultimately disqualification in a hammy sci-fi guise. A gentle story about Like a small but mighty lead, the show oscillates between nostalgic his ’80s coming-of-age yearnings and weird intergalactic theater, while youth is his 2000s tech flickering in his store’s fluorescent lights. , has to contend with the awkward self-confidence, and dread, of 90s rave culture. And, head-on, disgusted the old self. In his eight episodes of the season, time is shattered by walkie-talkies, dreams of college, hatred of siblings, endometriosis, heterosexuality, and more.

Mac (Sophia Rosinski), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), Erin (Riley Rye Neret) and KJ (Fina Strazza) begin their journey in 1988. No friends, no strangers, the girls employ a buddy system. On their route to avoid an altercation with an aggressive neighborhood boy, en route to their escape, until they encounter… aliens. Sudden plunge into a future where the sky oozes syrupy pepto-bismol pink, the Paper Girls seek to foster friendships for survival purposes and return home to the ’80s. The inability to walk up to 6 and purchase a room for the night.

Thus begins a series of encounters with their old selves in exchange for a roof over their heads, while not losing hope of returning to their abandoned bikes in the suburbs of the past. , inadvertently plunged into the middle of a space war between the face spaceship technicians and the Pterodactyl-controlling Overseers. Just being in the wrong place at the wrong time will make you your worst enemy.

Photo: Amazon Prime Video

Photo: Amazon Prime Video

But for a show that plunges viewers into gigantic combat robots, dinosaurs, time travel, and intergalactic murder like a preteen in need of a babysitter, paper girls Works best when girls are grappling with the classic conundrum of being old enough to know what they want but too young to fully understand how to get it. target. For Mac, a troubled tough punk wannabe, and a hard-working Jane Lane cosplayer, happiness looks like home security and the assurance that there will be food on the table for her at night. Mac’s narrative arc, performed to dastardly perfection by Rosinsky, is perhaps the heaviest — unlike other girls, she has the luxury of attending a meet and greet with her older self. No. In less competent hands, Mack’s storyline could easily veer into after-school special territory, but Rosinsky notes that Mack is a clichéd cliche written specifically for the Emmys clip. Never allow yourself to melt into a tearful performance. Mack is determined to live a better life and the causes that support it. By the end of the season’s cacophony and slightly overstuffed doomsday proceedings, Mac emerges as the show’s most fully realized heroine.

This is not to say that other girls haven’t been handed their fair share of growing pains. It means accepting the fact that your current self-perception may look very different in the morning. Watching her older self from afar forces KJ to consider the queerness she was just beginning to plunge into during her teenage years. Strazza’s unnerving performance sharply captures the repressive states of adolescence associated with the process of coming out. She quickly finds herself trapped in societal expectations that remain closed and tight-lipped forever, keenly aware of her future self’s unconscious approach to romance and self-liberation. ‘s mute look suggests it could really be better for queer youth than any of the Dan Savage video campaigns she’s had to suffer since the 2010s.

Jones also plays Tiffany, a brawny brainiac who dreams of speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the valedictorian. She’s a dropout living in a sick apartment I calmly accept the meaning of Jones handles the breaking news of her adult life well with stubborn defiance, indicating that her future may not yet be entirely decided.

Photo: Anjali Pinto/Prime Video

Photo: Anjali Pinto/Prime Video

Photo: Anjali Pinto/Prime Video

And then there’s young Erin, the newest paper girl on the block. Her coming of age leads to some of the series’ more tender moments, such as when she and the other girls struggle to understand the strange dimensions of tampons and how to use them. Best demonstrated in a conversation with his older self, played by Ali Wong, every stand-up comedian must be contractually obligated to perform at least once in their career. Thankfully, she nails adult Erin’s joyless, arrested development with seasoned couchsurfer air. Wong’s Erin is stuck in every sense of the word. She still lives in the house she grew up in, balancing her simmering resentment of her family and her longing tightrope for something out of reach that pushes her back into the driver’s seat of her life. .

In a series primarily used as a mirror for adults to reflect on their children themselves, adult Erin proves that growing up is an ongoing project of new and sometimes frustrating beginnings. It is only when confronted with the ghosts of their younger selves that girls can confront their childhood selves and paint a picture of the widening distance between the past and the present. will it be? For some, the conversation continues about unrealized goals and changes in worldly perspectives that can only come with aging. It will be a much-needed wake-up call to fundamentally change the trajectory of your life.

But while each actor pulls his own weight – there’s no weak link between them – they’re repeatedly let down by shoddy visuals that pale in comparison to the original material. What made the series lovable, aside from the characters at its core, was the erratic visual excess of every page, the cotton candy fever dream of neon hues and dazzling machines. You can’t find a sight like that. Save some fun visual effects moments related to the dinosaur’s giant beak. paper girls The show suffers from dimly lit places and overwhelming visions of the future. I can’t help but wonder what kind of visual magic would have happened on screen if there had been a show. stranger things budget, or if live-action procedurals were animated rather than actually rendered.

So we’re left with one of the biggest giant robot battles on the small screen ever. The sequence is thankfully short, but it stands out at its worst. On the carpet he finds more action and imagination watching his 7-year-old play with Bionicle. The villains and their motivations are also thinly drawn, and it’s easy to forget that the girls were being chased in the first place. The show’s tension can be felt more tangibly during the emotional excavations that the girls themselves make as they try to become greater than the inadequate future they see unfolding before their eyes. paper girls It’s at its best when the core four get together to debate, cry, laugh, and plot, and let their anxieties and worries get to them. If you’re looking for a story that’s obsessed with shoving excess vision into your cornea, I’d recommend picking up the paper copy. If you’re looking for a show that holds it next to its belief in, you can do worse. paper girls.