There’s something incredibly satisfying about a well-executed high-school film with all the right John Hughes-inspired sweet spots.
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As she gets older, Margo (model/actress/European royalty adjacent Cara Delevingne) trades up to the cool crowd, leaving “Q” behind.
Referring to the role of Margo Spiegelman in “Paper Towns”, she said: “If I got this part, I’d like to think it’s on merit”. But one night, towards the end of high school, Margo persuades Quentin to join her on a wild, night long adventure, which involves a series of outrageous pranks.
The next day, Margo is gone.
“Cara is an extremely free spirit and I identify with her a lot, in terms of living in the moment and not really thinking about the future”, says the British supermodel Delevingne.
But none of this registers with Quentin. She has inspired him to get out of his comfort zone, so he initiates a chain of events that eventually leads to an East Coast road trip with some of his closest friends.
All gawk and nerdy charm, Wolff effectively captures Quentin’s universality as a boy so into a girl he’s bound to do anything, even go searching for a “paper town”, a fake town placed on a map to prevent copyright infringement.
A movie version of Mr. Green’s book “The Fault in Our Stars“, about two teenagers diagnosed with cancer, stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort and was released last year to critical acclaim and box office success.
The source material helps to explain the narrative.
It’s in this interzone between intense structure and those first years of freedom that you’ll find Paper Towns, a tender, wise mainstream coming-of-age drama that’s still all over the place. In this case, it’s not such a bad thing. Unlike that film, this Green-based effort, again adapted by writing partners Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Their common goal to go find Margo not only calls for an exciting, cooperative puzzle-solving, but it brings the friends together-Radar’s girlfriend Angela, who had felt left out before, is finally introduced to his friends, while popular girl Lacey dismisses social status whereas before she would never be seen with someone like Ben (who crushes on her hard and desperately courts her as a prom date).
Quentin picks up on some of her clues this time.
The other protagonist of the story, actually the main one, is Quentin, played by Nat Wolff. English class is the last thing on the minds of most young adult characters in current movies.
If “Paper Towns” has an Achilles heel, it may be that it comes on the romantic heels of the previous John Green film.
But it’s the conclusion that truly sets Paper Towns apart. But those who do will have a rewarding experience. Rated PG-13 (mild language and suggested sexuality).
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Joshua Terry is a freelance writer and photojournalist who appears weekly on “The KJZZ Movie Show” and also teaches English composition for Salt Lake Community College.
