Four stars. Rated PG-13, for mild profanity, partial nudity and teen sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.24.15
Today’s teens continue to live in
great times, with respect to movies that speak to their experiences.
 |
| When Margo (Cara Delevingne) entices Quentin (Nat Wolff) to help her during a late-night bit of "payback," their first stop is a big-box store, where he grows increasingly nervous over the unusual items that get tossed into the shopping basket. |
Best of all, we’re getting solid,
respectful adaptations of existing books, graced with thoughtful, multi-faceted
storylines by authors who understand the importance of plot logic, character
development and — wait for it — subtlety.
As opposed to, say, this week’s
other high-profile release: the bombastic, über-dumb Pixels.
Paper Towns comes from the pen
of best-selling teen-lit author John Green, whose most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, brightened movie screens last summer. Paper Towns is an
earlier work; it’s also a quieter, mildly sneaky narrative that builds to a
somewhat unexpected conclusion ... albeit one that feels just right, in
hindsight.
The sensitive, finely tuned
screenplay comes from Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who certainly know
the territory; aside from having scripted The Fault in Our Stars last year,
in 2013 they also delivered a poignant adaptation of Tim Tharp’s The Spectacular Now.
Paper Towns is cut from
different cloth, most visibly because it doesn’t concern emotional damaged or
terminally ill characters. The teens populating this Florida suburb are
reasonably ordinary, and in a way that’s the crux of the narrative: None of us
wishes an ordinary life, particularly not as a teen. We all hope for something extravagant:
or, in the words of our protagonist, the “one miracle” to which he figures
everybody is entitled.
In the case of adolescent Quentin
“Q” Jacobsen (Josiah Cerio), living in the outskirts of Orlando, his miracle
arrives when Margo Roth Spiegelman (Hannah Alligood) and her family move into
the house across the street. Just like that, Quentin is smitten. Proximity
turns them into bike-to-school buddies, but Quentin soon discovers that Margo
is a wild child, whose adventurous nature eventually exceeds his comfort zone.
She’s ... disappointed. She
doesn’t exactly say or do anything, but young Alligood’s gaze reflects gentle
censure, perhaps even betrayal.
Flash-forward to the present day,
toward the end of everybody’s senior year in high school. Quentin (now Nat
Wolff) and Margo (Cara Delevingne) have drifted apart, become all but
strangers. She has cultivated a semi-scandalous reputation, replete with wild
stories passed within the school corridors.
