With Good On Paper, Netflix tries to subvert its own rom-com brand - The A.V. Club
(The film was produced by Universal but wound up at Netflix, which has also released Shlesinger’s five comedy specials and her sketch show.) Good On Paper opens with bits of Andrea’s stand-up that paint an ominous portrait of how often women are taught to sacrifice their intuition in the face of male persistence.
Good On Paper can’t decide if it wants to be a broad comedic caper, a grounded character study about love and life in L.A., or a blackly comic thriller like A Simple Favor.First-time feature director Kimmy Gatewood can’t quite pull off the tricky task of telegraphing that something is up with Dennis without making Andrea seem like an idiot for continuing to trust him.
Instead of translating a real-life experience into something enjoyably madcap, Good On Paper more often than not feels like a friend recounting every detail of a story that’s less interesting than they think it is.
In trying to both score laughs and impart a moral, Good On Paper doesn’t really manage to do either; it’s not funny enough to work as a straight comedy and not human enough to work as a dramedy.
Still, the sheer audacity of what it’s trying to do within the romantic comedy genre counts for something.
Good On Paper essentially delivers a “hold my beer†escalation to the anti-rom-com subversions of movies like My Best Friend’s Wedding and (500) Days Of Summer