Film: 'Paper Planes' (2015)

This was a quietly awesome little movie, a gem in the rough. It falls into the category of 'things I cry to' pretty easily, but also into that of 'movies that don't quite do what you expect'. As soon as you see that the main character's father is grieving, you get a set idea of how it's all going to work out in your head, but in reality it runs just a little differently. After all, this is a film about paper planes...

Who would have known that there was a World Junior Paper Plane Championship? Who would ever have thought that happened? Apparently, it does, and in the movie the finals were in the most obvious country of Japan, home of papercraft. There's even a little sequence where the contestants, including our main character Dylan, twelve year old plane prodigy from a little dustbowl town in Australia, get the traditional process shown to them in a Japanese garden.

This post is definitely rolling out in a non-linear fashion, isn't it? 'Paper Planes' is about Dylan, who is recovering from his mother's death and simultaneously worrying about his father's extended grieving. A chance encounter with a student teacher leads him into completing in a regional paper plane championship, which then cascades finally into the World Championship in Tokyo. Yes, there's a bad boy competitor, and the dad does finally begin to emerge from his cocoon, but there's also a crazy grandpa who breaks all kinds of rules, his oddball school friend, and the girl Japanese national champion who becomes Dylan's friend through it all. None of it quite goes as expected, and when it does it does so efficiently and simply.

The child acting is decent, and improves over the course of the movie, but the real strength is in the simplicity and composition of the two layers of narrative. Why do some films work, and others don't? It's hard to say. Is this success related to the elegantly simple Australian style at work? Maybe. Ultimately, for me, it's more to do with telling a story uncynically and viewing the world in an honestly charming way. No-one flies over the top, not even the roguish war veteran grandfather. Well, maybe he does fly out into ham land a little, but it fits. His most telling interlude is handled very nicely indeed.

This could have been a gooey and sentimental mess, but it works well. It could have taken the grieving storyline and made us squirm awkwardly at times, but it doesn't. The paper plane aspects lifts the movie into being something slightly new, and that's always welcome. It's a good film, and an instant DVD purchase. It's also at times rather funny, and has some pretty good music.

Paper planes? Who would have thought it?

O.