Paper Towns (2015)
Directed by Jake Schreier
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge, he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Quentin arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Quentin soon learns that there are clues, and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Quentin gets, the less he sees of the girl he thought he knew.
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Plus, Paper Towns (the title refers to an ancient practice of mapmakers to insert fake names in order to prevent plagiarism) has its own rhythms, somewhat reminiscent of past coming-of-age films like Stand By Me and Frank Perry’s classic Last Summer in which the main characters experience the last pangs of youthful security before heading out into uncharted territories alone in the cruel world.
Despite its somewhat novel romantic-mystery structure, “Paper Towns” borrows from a number of sources, including dipping its ladle into the John Hughes wellspring (elements of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and others) and mixing ingredients from various road-trip movies into its cauldron.
This ambitious teenpic begins in the vein of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as a rebellious high school senior (Cara Delevingne) recruits the shy boy next door (Nat Wolff) to join her in a night of mischief around suburban Orlando.
Plus, Paper Towns (the title refers to an ancient practice of mapmakers to insert fake names in order to prevent plagiarism) has its own rhythms, somewhat reminiscent of past coming-of-age films like Stand By Me and Frank Perry’s classic Last Summer in which the main characters experience the last pangs of youthful security before heading out into uncharted territories alone in the cruel world.
If The Fault in Our Stars was young-adult author John Green's answer to the ne plus ultra of romantic weepies, 1970's Love Story, then Paper Towns is his variation on 1986's Stand by Me.
While he has passed the years hanging out with his best friends, the sensible Radar (Justice Smith) and the obnoxious Ben (Austin Abrams, channeling Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles), Margo has gained twin reputations as a maverick and a mystery, surrounded by friends but perpetually striking out on her own to do something unexpected and often even rash.
It’s up to Q and his “Sixteen Candles” sidekicks Radar (Justice Smith) and Ben (Austin Abrams) to find clues, solve the mystery and track her to whatever Paper Town she’s run for.
Abrams, meanwhile, does for this film what Anthony Michael Hall did for the geek in “Sixteen Candles,” bringing a note of pathos to what might have been an obnoxious stereotype of horniness.
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Viewers over the age of, say, 14 are likely to be suspicious of the whole conception of Margo, who may be named after Gwyneth Paltrow's character in The Royal Tenenbaums , and in any case is similarly all quirk.
That is until the anticlimactic reappearance of Margo, basically a watered-down version of the character Gwyneth Paltrow played in “The Royal Tenenbaums.”
The setup, with its theme of seeing people beyond their public facades and not insisting that they to live up to your fantasy version of them, has more in common with “ Gone Girl ” than “ Fast Times at Ridgemont High .”
There are no iconic high school characters like Slater and Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused,” John Milner and Toad of “American Grafitti,” Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Cher (“Clueless”), or of course—Ferris Bueller.
In one of his first solo lead roles, Nat Wolff (2013's " Admission ") is tremendously appealing as Quentin, a cross between Tom Cruise in 1983's "Risky Business," John Cusack in 1989's "Say Anything," and Emile Hirsch in 2004's " The Girl Next Door ."
But “Risky Business” it’s not, and Delevingne is no Rebecca De Mornay.
In one of his first solo lead roles, Nat Wolff (2013's " Admission ") is tremendously appealing as Quentin, a cross between Tom Cruise in 1983's "Risky Business," John Cusack in 1989's "Say Anything," and Emile Hirsch in 2004's " The Girl Next Door ."
Wolff's Q has an early John Cusack quality, falling somewhere between the optimism of Say Anything's Lloyd Dobler and the confidence of The Sure Thing's Gib.
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In true manic pixie dream girl fashion, reminiscent of the journey Kirsten Dunst sets Orlando Bloom on at the end of “Elizabethtown,” Margo leaves a series of clues for Quentin as to her whereabouts.
Wolff's Q has an early John Cusack quality, falling somewhere between the optimism of Say Anything's Lloyd Dobler and the confidence of The Sure Thing's Gib.