‘Paper Heart’ is pretentious self-pondering

The crockumentary crashes and burns in "Paper Heart," built around comedian Charlyne Yi's purported search for true love.

Yi is the offbeat L.A. stand-up who appeared in "Knocked Up" as the socially awkward girl in Seth Rogen's circle of stoner friends, a performance with more than a hint of her stage persona.

In "Paper Heart," she's a single gal who claims she doesn't believe in true love, and so goes on the road with a camera crew to interview people on the subject.

At least, that's what we're promised.

Yi doesn't seem much interested in what other people have to say, and in any case the movie virtually abandons that mission when Yi meets Michael Cera at a party and they commence to date.

Now, Cera was apparently her real-life boyfriend, the movie won a film-festival screenplay award, and there's an actor playing Yi's supposed "director."

So, there are obvious questions regarding what is real, staged, improvised or some combination of the three. In the age of Michael Moore and Sacha Baron Cohen, these questions always arise.

Yi would probably answer by saying the question isn't important. What's important, tactics aside, is that we arrive at some kind of emotional truth.

Well, the truth is, I was bored and irked by Yi's solipsistic and insular exercise, part of a larger and ever more off-putting movie trend in which artists ponder themselves. "Paper Heart" is punctuated by her homemade dioramas, and the impromptu song she makes up on her acoustic guitar, which is even more insubstantial than the songs in the freecreditreport.com commercials.

I was also annoyed that Cera has ignored my repeated calls that he broaden his wardrobe beyond the zippered hoodie. The movie's "candid" looks at his personal life reveal that his actual clothes are no different than his movie clothes, and that he has a zippered hoodie to match every color in the rainbow, and then some.