Bland ‘Paper Flowers’ is an empty garden

    Cancer is never funny, but movies about it sure can be, even unintentionally so, such as the insipid wannabe weeper “Paper Flowers.” It produces more corn than the entire state of Iowa in canonizing a selfless martyr not seen since the days of Sister Teresa.

    I’m sure the real Shalin Shah, a recent USC grad and Peace Corps volunteer who had the rotten luck to be stricken by synovial sarcoma, was a heck of a young man, bravely staring cancer in the face and refusing to let it prevent him from living life to its fullest. But the actor portraying him, Kapil Talwalkar, reduces him to the level of a disease-of-the-week sage uttering trite bromides such as “Paper flowers never die; they also never live” and “Stay positive; no time for negativity” as if he were Confucius himself.

    Director Mahesh Pailoor splashes these words of wisdom in bold script across the screen to add to the mawkish tone he seeks to establish through hushed, muted lighting complemented by soft piano tones. To further his intent to pound us over the head, he urges his cast to recite every line he and co-writer Mary Krell-Oishi put on the page with melodramatic intensity. You can’t help but giggle at the stilted pomposity in how this unbridled haminess is projected in what should have been the film’s most poignant passages.

     Thank God for the wonderful Karan Soni, building upon his excellent performance in last year’s “A Nice Indian Boy” by making Shalin’s closeted gay BFF, Milan, the only character remotely in touch with how real people behave. He steals his every scene, which, to be honest, isn’t hard when Shalin’s strict parents, Jay (Faran Tahir) and Reema (Meera Simhan), are behaving like bigots in refusing to approve of their son’s childhood sweetheart, Fiona Chang (Olivia Liang). Jay, who, BTW, rocks cozy cardigan sweaters to no end, goes as far as to nix the idea of inviting her over to dinner.

    Even when Shalin, after emitting dozens of unconvincing coughing jags, the universal signal of a movie character’s imminent demise, Jay glares menacingly at Fiona for daring to show up at the hospital following his son’s life-saving (for now) surgery. Was the real Jay this much of a hardass? I sincerely doubt it. But thanks to Tahir’s laser stares, he makes for one helluva movie villain.

    Alas, the true bad guy in all this is Pailoor, whose adaptation of Shalin’s viral Huffington Post piece, “Thank You, Cancer,” is so treacly it makes your teeth hurt. He reduces what could have been an affecting tale of taking time to sniff the roses into the sappiest Lifetime movie known to mankind. One blatantly inviting ridicule and mockery for its unrelenting rose-colored schmaltz.

   I laughed myself silly, especially during the hospital scenes, which weren’t even close to accurate in how cancer is treated, a subject I unfortunately know firsthand. And I’ve yet to meet an oncologist who doubles as an ace surgeon like Tom Everett Scott’s Dr. Baxter. Nor have I ever had a Natalie (Jenny Gago), a nurse who seems to be at Shalin’s side 24-7 as if there are no other patients on her floor.

   I’ve witnessed some dopey Jenny Cavilleri imitators in my career, but this one takes the wedding cake for having the balls to roll out the old “rush the groom to the altar” after Shalin makes a miraculous recovery from an infection that threatened to scrub his exchange of vows with Fiona. But that’s not as bad as the plethora of cloying scenes of loved ones dissolving into tears or burying their despondent faces into open palms.

   I thought this movie was about Shalin’s thirst to live, not about how depressed he made everyone. But like Shalin, let’s opt to look at this flick’s chief asset: providing immense laughter, albeit unintentional. And give credit where credit is due, as Pailoor deftly induces the “coma” in sarcoma.

Movie review

Paper Flowers

Rated: Not rated

Cast: Kapil Talwalkar, Olivia Liang, Karan Soni, Faran Tahir, Meera Simhan and Tom Everett Scott

Director: Mahesh Pailoor

Writers: Mary Krell-Oishi and Mahesh Pailoor

Runtime: 95 minutes

Where: In theaters Aug. 21 (limited)

Grade: D