Sembrava perfetto... e invece

Expectations can severely alter your perception. Over hyping something can easily put it on a pedestal which will inevitably result in disappointment. But the opposite can be true as well. At first glance, Good on Paper looks like such painful, straight to Netflix rom-com trash that I had been dreading throwing it on. But I'm a fan of Iliza Shlesinger's stand-up work, and was curious to see her film debut. I kept waiting all movie for it to take a sharp turn towards shmaltzy sentimentality, but as it became clear that it wasn't going down that road, it had me rooting in it's corner! By the same token, if I was expecting knee slapping hilarity, it may have been a bit of a let down, as it doesn't really succeed at bringing the frantic energy of Iliza's live shows to the big screen. What you get is a rather amusing story which basically did happen to the comedian in real life, and a light easy watch that doesn't get bogged down by tired genre clichés.

So this was advertised as a romantic comedy, but it's not really that.

It's about fake personality, something that's a real pain in the ass nowadays, where almost everyone is damaged and has low self-esteem because psychopaths and cunning narcissists get it all, and rub it in.

It starts off quite romantically, and gradually the doubts kick in

• is this guy really what he pretends to be?

Then the movie takes a darker turn, and it doesn't recover.

You get the bitter truth.

The dialogues are quick-witted, acting is good enough to carry the story, there are a lot of small jokes and funny moment that are worthwhile.

Don't expect a "happy" ending.

This is basically a movie version of "Dirty John" as a comedy.

If you like Iliza Shlesinger (I do), go watch it, it's certainly not bad.

I heard Iliza Shlesinger on The Joe Rogan Experience recently promoting this movie. She talked about the real-life events that led to the movie being written. I remember after she told the story thinking, that's an interesting story but how is it enough to justify making a movie out of? It sounds like the plot of the very laziest Lifetime movie. Sure enough that's pretty much how the film comes across.

I may be mistaken but I don't remember seeing a movie inter-spliced with stand-up comedy before. I've certainly seen it in sit-coms like 'Seinfeld' and 'Louie', and it works reasonably well there, but to do it in a movie seems strange. Particularly considering none of the stand-up is in any way funny. Surely if you're going to do that you want to be putting your best stuff out there, right? And I think that's the biggest crime this movie commits - it's written by a comedian, and is still never once funny.

It's not all terrible though. I found Shlesinger and Ryan Hansen watchable enough in the leads, and some of the side characters have the odd moment of interest. There's the odd intriguing scene too, like the one set on a golf course (although that could just be down to me liking golf). 'Good on Paper' was a film that I should've hated immensely, but instead sat there only mildly bored for 90 minutes. I can't put my finger on what that was down to exactly. This isn't one I'd recommend all the same. 5/10.

I wanted to like this movie but it was a rough watch. The jokes felt a bit lazy, the scenes too exaggerated, and the ending felt unrealistic and as though it was simply trying too hard.

5/10 - definitely not the rom-com I was expecting when I hit play on Netflix, but despite everyone involved's best efforts, this one just does not stand out as anything remarkable and most of the jokes seemed to fall flat (at least for me)