'Paper Towns' review, starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne

Paper Towns is a subpar John Green novel, so it’s only fitting for Jake Schreier’s film adaptation to be somewhat substandard as well. Actually, that’s a bit harsh. Although firmly targeted in the ever-growing young quirky love genre —and coming straight from Green’s almost annoyingly overplayed formula — there’s an accessible maturity to this coming-of-age tale only rarely accomplished this pleasantly. It’s familiar and a tad stale, but nevertheless more thoughtful and neatly tuned than these movies come. It’s not better than average, but it's happy just to skate by, and shows enough care and style to float.

Quentin “Q” Jacobsen (Nat Wolff) believes everyone gets one miracle. By his own admission, he thinks his was living across the street from his advantageous peer Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne). She’s popular, envied and legendary among her classmates, though solely because they don’t know what to make of her erratic personality. People don’t understand Q either, but practically by choice. He’s straight-laced and gets straight-As, as he sloshes through school low-key down in the band room with fellow loners Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Justice Smith), even though Q himself doesn’t play in their music ensemble. He can barely make eye contact with the woman holding his affections dear, let alone get the opportunity to tell her how he feels. His golden opportunity comes, however, when weeks before graduation, he’s awoken to an unexpected surprise in his bedroom window: Margo herself.

Late one school night, Q’s childhood friend worms him into helping her complete a nine-part “ninja attack” for the evening, where they’ll seek revenge on cheating boyfriends, bad friends and bad-tempered jocks as Q drives them around town in his mother’s mini-van. A naked body gets an unfortunate picture taken, dead fish are thrown and one person gets their eyebrow shaved, and it all amounts to the best night of Q’s life. The fun doesn’t continue forever, though, as Margo disappears from town shortly after their escapades. Uncertain of her safety and general well being, he begins unveiling her departed clues and, with the help of his best friends and Margo’s one-time BFF Lacey (Halston Sage), they’ll come together to shine a light on the woman constantly hidden in the shadows.

The Fault in Our Stars comparisons are inevitable. Both share a pride in celebrating everything from teen angst all the way to doomed young love, yet both have fairly individual goals in mind. This is all the more apparent by how much screenwriters Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber deviate from the book in the second half of Schreier’s movie, made weird by how fateful they were to Green’s words in Josh Boone’s heart-on-its-sleeve teen-weeper last year and also by how much they continue respecting the author’s work and story beats despite essentially rewriting his book.

Fault was bolstered from its clichéd narrative and corny antics thanks to its two anomalous leads and the equally sumptuous performances driving them. It was all a bit plain-faced, but carefully packaged and sweetly realized. Paper Towns isn’t without its cheesy moments, but it tries interceding with itself, thematically, a little more. It’s a mystery of sorts — even though it’s evident they’ll find the lady — and it’s a wannabe romance story and also an early adulthood drama. It serves into three lanes, just like Green’s book, but really both only needs to get into one-or-two to reach their planned destination. Stories can most certainly play with genres, but neither Schreier nor Green appear confident enough to really tweak with conventions here. Boone’s movie may be blunt in its execution, but it knew where to go and how to get there. That’s where it succeeded steadily and this one mostly stumbles.

Once again like Fault, however, Paper Towns finds its strength in its lead performers. Though concocted into an oddball adolescent fable that’s only odd for some of the right reasons, there’s a charm and suave given by Wolff and Delevingne’s admirable work almost in spite of itself, as they’re confidence and assurance is always fun and exciting to watch. But only one of them makes a lasting impression: the elusive Margo, just like in the book. She’s a puzzle not designed to be solved, and even though it’s her first lead role, Delevingne handles Margo’s larger-than-life, clouted figure with a high-on-life energy mixed with a nicely refined, above-her-years nuance. The actress makes the character affable and inviting in ways Green couldn’t and, even when the movie tires too hard to erase her complexities to make her some kind of unparalleled goddess, she’s capable enough to keep Margo down-to-earth.

Wolff is also inviting and winning, but his character remains too paper-thin to resonate — pun mildly intended. As his primary motivation/reason for living depends on him fawning over his neighbor, Paper Towns continues an annoying on-going habit too many YA adaptations suffer from. By having Wolff read directly from the transcript, Schreier relies too much on telling instead of showing. Unlike Inherent Vice — where this framing device served to set characters and tone — Schreier’s film doesn’t really have a purpose of this (especially considering how they show almost everything he says anyway) other than to appease fans of the author who’ll consider it non-kosher to remove such transcriptions.

Despite these unnecessarily monologues, Weber and Neustadter do make a better story through their fixes. Different plot holes are created through their reworked details, and character motivations sometimes are lost in the charade, but they give some wonkier elements in the story a fresher, more grounded approach. Ben, Radar and Q’s friendship, in particular, feels far more honest here, and this makes the message sing. Lacey and Ben’s eventual relationship, meanwhile, is actually developed and not just written as such, handing their characters more depth.

They even take someone, Radar’s girlfriend Angela (Jaz Sinclair), with barely a line in Green’s book as far as I remember (and I read it about a week ago) and make her presence warm and caring. This is a smoother telling, and provides this movie with a vital integrity to shine with, if just a little. The screenwriters don’t take mediocrity and turn it into gold, and it’s not their miracle — that came with (500) Days of Summer or The Spectacular Now, take your pick — but they make the adventure worth the hassle. As Q comes into its own, so eventually does Paper Towns.