The film adaptation of John Green’s Paper Towns has many high points (the cast, the comedy, the cameos), but the story itself hinders it from being wonderful overall.
Paper Towns is a paper story.
It seems as if it has a real message at its core and a story to carry it through but hold a light to it and it’s just as thin as its namesake.
Paper Towns is the the second of popular young-adult author John Green’s novels to be adapted into a film. It tells the story of Quentin Jacobsen (Nat Wolff) who has an unwavering yet one-sided love for his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne). Though they were close as kids, high school and cliques separated the two almost entirely until Margo climbs through Q’s window one night. After taking him on an all-night adventure around their Orlando hometown, Margo disappears, leaving behind clues that Q tries to piece together to find her.
In and of itself, the film is going to be a hit with its young-adult demographic. Its snappy soundtrack is full of indie pop beats to bob your head along with as you spend the summer nights driving aimlessly down the streets — just like Q and Margo! Oh how fun! Wolff is setting himself up as a more everyday teen heartthrob, and Delevingne is steathily growing her presence everywhere, whether it’s with the Suicide Squad or that other squad. There’s bathroom and sexual humor, and a oh so magical prom scene. It’s actually well-shot as well.
The formula is there, though its debut was nowhere near that of The Fault in Our Stars, the first Green novel to be adapted to a film.
In looking at the film’s purpose though, it fails even more than its small debut.
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Green is often mentioned in conversations about the character trope of the “manic pixie dream girl,” a phrase coined by Nathan Rabin in his A.V. Club review of Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown. A manic pixie dream girl (MPDG), Rabin said, “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
It’s a disgusting box many women are put into. Women are real people. They aren’t perfect imaginations or goddesses. Women rule the world, yes, but they’re real human beings.
Green’s first novel Looking for Alaska sets out to show how problematic this trope is, but Green admits that it failed in doing so. Thus, he wrote Paper Towns to try to show how most people fail to imagine others in a complex way and how women are unfairly put on a pedestal.
As a whole, the novel does portray this message. Q has idolized Margo his entire life even though he, and the rest of his high school, barely knows her and only sees her as the ultimate cool girl. She’s unbelievably pretty, mysterious and fascinating.
In this sense, Cara Delevingne is perfect. As a supermodel, Delevingne has experienced this idolization. Supermodels are the epitome of a form of MPDGs. In the film, Delevingne is unbelievably enigmatic. She only appears for about 20 minutes and yet it’s not hard to see why Q would want to chase her the entire 100 minutes of the film. She perfectly captured the essence of Margo, “the cool girl.”
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Nat Wolff also makes for an excellent Quentin. The men in the MPDG stories are as flat as an old Coca Cola, and Q is right up there with the best of them. He has nothing spectacular happening in his scripted life. He gets good grades; he has some friends; he’s going to college; he’s planning on getting a job and starting a family. He is the perfect male in a MPDG story. And Wolff is excellent at playing a boring character. He delivers a solid, subtle performance as a bland protagonist. However, it’s hard to say whether this understated performance is meant to actually be a depiction of the male anti-MPDG and not just a failed attempt at acting.
Nevertheless, the original member of The Naked Brothers Band delivers and is likely to be the subject of many teen girls’ doodles on their notebooks.
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When analyzed, Q’s unwavering love for Margo is exactly what is wrong with MPDGs. He knew her as a child but he hasn’t spoken to her in years and is in love with the idea of her. The audience assumes this role as well as we travel with Q to find “the love of his life.” We all feel compelled to find her even though we have barely interacted with her. It’s a perfect set up to show the downfall of the manic pixie dream girl.
In summation, Paper Towns works. In practice, not so much.
The novel does not make its point that Q realizes Margo is just “a girl” until two-thirds of the way through. Even after, he still chases her. Too much of the plot is focused on Q’s idolization. Green’s point about MPDGs is made but it isn’t apparent. It actually seems like another example of the trope of the manic pixie dream girl being played out. If Green wanted to make his point perfectly clear, he should have exemplified more often, and simply just more, that Q’s love was wrong and unwarranted. Sure, Q’s friends tell him he’s crazy but doesn’t that happen in most romantic teen films?
The film isn’t any better. The story is tightened a little and extraneous side storylines are dropped but it also doesn’t end with an ultimate message about respecting others and thinking of them as humans. Sure, they say a line or two about it toward the end so that idea might be fresh in an audience member’s mind, but it isn’t what is being shown the rest of the time. For the whole film, Q pines after Margo, finds her clues and chases her down.
Though there are irreparable problems with the story’s source material, the film itself has its high points. It’s unexpectedly quite funny at many times. It’s well edited. The cast’s undeniable chemistry buoys the otherwise intolerable storyline. It features a cameo by John Green and an event better one by a certain Fault in Our Stars actor. It remarkably casted a young actress who looks identical to Delevingne. It also has a small nod to Green’s favorite band The Mountain Goats.
It’s a decent film. It has a lot of the elements but the fundamental problems of its story holds it back from being anything great.
Rating: 2.5/5
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