Paper Towns – movie review

Adapted from the bestselling novel by author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), this is centred on Quentin (Q) and his enigmatic neighbour Margo, who loved mysteries so much she became one.

Quentin Jacobson is intelligent, a loyal mate and a romantic.  He’s 17 and in his senior high school year.  Q believes that everyone gets a miracle in life and his came when he was just nine, the day Margo Roth Spiegelman moved in next door.  Margo was always an adventurer, while Q was quite the opposite (cautious, respectful and inevitably doing the right thing).  Over the years Q developed best friends Ben and Radar.  Margo, on the other hand, became increasingly daring and enigmatic as well as one of the cool kids in school.  So, Q and Margo drifted apart. One evening, only a few weeks before prom, Margo shows up at Q’s window and leads him on a covert all-night adventure.  Q is certain this signals a return to his friendship (and maybe more) with the unrequited love of his life and true soul mate.  He knows his future is about to change … and it does. The next morning, Margo is gone. She has simply disappeared and hasn’t left word with anyone … or has she?  Cryptic clues begin appearing and Q and his friends take their first cross-country road trip.

John Green’s third novel Paper Towns was an immediate hit, debuting at number five on The New York Times bestsellers list for young adult fiction.  Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who adapted The Fault in Our Stars for the big screen, have done so again here.  Talking of that earlier film, the guy who played Isaac in Fault, Nat Wolff, is Q in Paper Towns, a young man who is emboldened by the “throw caution to the wind attitude” of Margo (a role filled by Cara Delevingne).

While The Fault in Our Stars was a full-on weepie, this is more a pedestrian coming of age tale.  It really is about the ordinary. Very little happens. The three buddies in their final year of school hardly stand out. They are mundane.  Clearly Q is intrigued by Margo because she dares to be different. He fantasises about her, but just when he thinks she is out of his reach, she gives him hope.

I have seen umpteen road trip movies over the years involving young and old, but, I am sorry, this one barely passes muster.  The characters and nice and – by and large – safe. They play it by the book and the writers have tried their level best to string out the plot but therein lies part of the rub.  Even when the first clues appear following Margo’s disappearance, nothing in the follow up moves mountains or motivates us, the audience, to care too much.  Perhaps that also has to do with the fact that Margo is flighty. We don’t get to know her because she remains aloof.

To me Papers Towns is wafer thin and is hardly worth the paper it was written on. I also thought the direction by Jake Schreier – whose first film Robot & Frank was so intriguing – was loose.  Rated M, it scores a 5½ out of 10.

Director: Jake Schreier
Cast: Cara Delevingne, Halston Sage and Nat Wolff
Release Date: 16 July, 2015
Rating: M

Alex First