It’s tempting to describe Paper Planes as a journey back to the good old days. When we made simple movies for a simpler time. In fact, that is half right. Paper Planes does harken back to a period not long ago when Australasian movies seemingly all focused on putting entertainment first, recognising that “high quality” and “high brow” are in fact entirely different phrases. The part that’s false is the simpler time – these films work just as well today, as Paper Planes gleefully proves.
The young but talented and oh-so-hot-right-now Ed Oxenbould (Puberty Blues, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) plays Dylan, a country kid whose mum is dead and whose dad (Sam Worthington) is so depressed he’s watching Bangladesh play cricket. On the bright side, Grandpa has amassed something of a harem at his old folks’ home. When Dylan unearths a hidden talent for throwing paper planes he learns of a regional competition that could take him to the national championships in Sydney and from there to the world championships in Japan.
With its setup thus established, Paper Planes goes on to have even more fun than it has folded sheets of A4 office supplies. Driven by its story, the film deftly skips from scene to scene thanks to the talented direction of Robert Connolly (Balibo).
This is not philosophy, nor an insight into the human condition, it is a broadly entertaining, fast-moving and high quality family film. Paper planes are an old fashioned form of entertainment that still works today, Paper Planes is exactly the same.
