Paper Towns

John Green has carved out a nice little niche for himself in the teen lit genre and it's nice to see that his books are making their way to the big screen, if only to get a break from all the dystopia and teenage rock stars that have plagued the genre as of late. The first of his books to hit cinemas was The Fault in Our Stars, which I enjoyed immensely for the ugly cry movie it was. Following that film's massive success last summer comes the decidedly lighter Paper Towns, based on the novel of the same name.

Quentin (played by Nat Wolff) has had an unrequited crush on the girl across the street, Margo (played by Cara Delevingne), ever since she moved in when they were both young kids. They were friends up until high school and then their paths began to diverge. She hung out with the popular kids, he hung out with his two friends, Ben (played by Austin Abrams) and Radar (played by Justice Smith). One night, she appears at his bedroom window and tells him she needs his help with nine things. He quickly agrees, first driving to get supplies and then setting out on Margo's mission. Turns out her now ex-boyfriend has been cheating on her and her targets are said boyfriend, her best friend he was cheating with and his best friend who knew the entire time. As they move from stop to stop, Quentin can't help but feel his affections for Margo start to rev up again after he felt like he was finally getting over her. They finish out the night playfully dancing together on the top floor of an office building to the muzak playing over the loud speakers. 

However, the next morning at school, Quentin is surprised to discover that Margo is nowhere to be found. She has vanished into thin air. This isn't the first time she's run away either, having adventures across the country, but always returning home. Quentin starts to notice small clues Margo left behind. Putting the clues together, he figures out that she was headed to a paper town in upstate New York (a paper town in a fake town that cartographers would chart on their maps as a way of copyrighting them and if anyone copied it they would be able to instantly tell). Intrigued by this mystery, Quentin heads out with Ben, Radar, Radar's girlfriend Angela (played by Jaz Sinclair) and Margo's friend Lacey (played by Halston Sage) in his tan 2000 Honda Odyssey to find Margo and bring her home.

There's something inherently charming about this film that made me like it. The story itself is an intriguing one and takes it's own unique spin on the well worn territory of unrequited love and coming of age tales. While the central mystery of the film, where Margo went, is a compelling one, equal weight is given to that time in one's life when your high school years come to a close and college is right around the corner. While it does give focus to those moments, it doesn't have the emotional weight one would hope for with this sort of subject matter. They have all realized they only have a few months left together and are going to make the most of it while they can and have accepted that going off to different colleges to start a new chapter in their lives in inevitable. While that's all fine and dandy, it would've maybe added more to the story if they hadn't started there already at the beginning of the film. 

The acting is nice, especially by Nat Wolff, who has a unique everyman quality about him that makes him perfectly suited to this type of role. Cara Delevingne does a good job as well as Margo, creating a character that is mysterious and intriguing enough to make it plausible for Quentin and Co. to go looking for her, but yet she doesn't spill over into the dreaded Magic Pixie Dream Girl trope. It's a balancing act, but she nails it.


Overall, there is nothing particularly groundbreaking or new about Paper Towns. It doesn't reach the teen film heights of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, or Perks of Being a Wallflower, but then again it never entirely set out with such high ambition.  While the film never quite reaches the heights of the genre, it works in it's own low key sort of way. I just can't help but wish it had a little more to it at the same time. It winds itself up nicely, but is missing the home run at the end to truly make it memorable.