Kevin Smith Reviews Paper Girls: “Incredibly Surprising”

Prime Video’s adaptation of Paper Girls arrived late last month, and it looks like the comedy-of-age dramedy has already courted quite a lot of fans. As it turns out, beloved director and actor Kevin Smith is among them, with Smith taking to the most recent episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast to praise the series. Paper Girls follows four young girls who, while out delivering papers on the morning after Halloween in 1988, become unwittingly caught in a conflict between warring factions of time-travelers, sending them on an adventure through time that will save the world. As they travel between our present, the past, and the future — they encounter future versions of themselves and now must choose to embrace or reject their fate.

“F-ck, is it delightful,” Smith revealed. “It’s only eight episodes, each episode’s half an hour, maybe 33 minutes or some such shit. Charming as f-ck. I knew the comic but I didn’t read the comic, I was familiar with the existence of the comic. And I remember my kid, at one point had said ‘Did you ever read Paper Girls?’ when she was working at [DC Daily]. ‘It’s really good!’ and i was like I’ll get around to it, and I never got around to it. In some ways i’m glad that i didn’t, because the the f-cking show is incredibly surprising. At one point, I don’t want to spoil it, but I think I’ve gotta, in order to f-cking get some people to maybe give it a shot. Some people might like ‘Ah.’ It’s time traveling f-cking show! These four girls on bikes — and I didn’t watch Stranger Things, but Harley made me watch the pilot for the first episode of Paper Girls. And she was a big Stranger Things kid, so I was like ‘Four girls on bikes in that show? Isn’t that show four boys on bikes and sh-t?’ And she goes, ‘That’s about the only similarity between them.’ I said ‘Okay.’ It starts off with four paper girls who wind up kind of getting together in 1988, and then they f-cking fall, essentially, through a time hole and meet their older f-cking selves in two different decades. There’s a giant f-cking robot at one point that gets piloted. They’re fighting a war in the future. It is so f-cked up and delightful! I had no idea that’s what it was. It’s imaginative. 

“F-ck man, what a delightful ride it was,” Smith continued. “All the actresses, the kids who played the the leads, were wonderful. And then the their adult counterparts — I think Ali Wong was one of them, I believe — great job across the board. F-cking original story that I’d never seen before, sweet cool notions of like — most sci-fi and time travel is like ‘You can’t meet your f-cking self, or you’ll disappear!’ This wasn’t that, so you had these long lovely scenes between the young versions of the characters and the old versions of the characters, counseling back and forth. So sweetly well done. And faster than f-cking light, like they’re they’re very brief episodes, but incredibly imaginative. One of those things where i was like ‘Jesus, man, I gotta get out of this game. People are far more inventive than I am. They’re making sh-t like Paper Girls, I’m making sh-t like [Clerks 3].’ Something’s wrong here, because that’s the future. Intricate, layered storytelling about f-cking characters you’ve never seen before. Clerks is ‘Hey it’s two dudes working in a convenience store.’ You’ve seen that before, because i’ve showed it to you before. This? I went on a journey, an incredible journey and stuff. Look, there’s room for all kinds of entertainment. I was just delighted that I spent my time with this eight episodes.”

Smith also revealed how quickly he decided to binge-watch the series, and how he hopes that the show has become a positive hit for Prime Video.

“Absolutely worth the f-cking time, I was delighted the whole time,” Smith explained. I split it between two nights — or a night and then I got up the next morning, I woke my wife up, I was like ‘Get up, we gotta go back to watching that show!’ I couldn’t believe that the, I think it was the fourth episode, all of a sudden they introduced a giant f-cking robot, like a f-cking Voltron, like ‘Get in the giant robot and f-cking walk around!’”

“It seems like this is getting a lot of attention, and positive attention,” Smith added. “I don’t know who gauges whether these things are successful or not, but it feels like it’s a hit for Amazon, because i’ve seen lots of people talking about it. Once i started watching it, i had to go f-cking diving, ‘Is anybody else watching this?’ And i was not alone!”

Paper Girls stars Sofia Rosinsky as Mac Coyle, Camryn Jones as Tiffany Quilkin, Riley Lai Nelet as Erin Tieng, Fina Strazza as KJ Brandman, Ali Wong as Adult Erin, Nate Corddry as Larry, Adina Porter as the Prioress, and Jason Mantzoukas as Grandfather.

Have you checked out Prime Video’s Paper Girls? What do you think of Kevin Smith’s review of the series? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

The first season of Paper Girls is now available to stream exclusively on Prime Video.