I enjoyed this a lot. It's very faithful to the source material, with a few changes in the second half that didn't bother me. I think the film does a good job with having (spoilers but not really) Delevingne not be in the movie after the first half hour because although she is quite good and a surprisingly natural actress, when she's gone the stuff with the friends works just as well. I also appreciate the film for having people that actually look like teenagers, kudos. Some stuff does get lost from book to film but that's to be expected.

I am not a member of youth-oriented novelist John Green's expansive readership, but I found last year's The Fault in Our Stars to be a very pleasant surprise: at once a bit hip and very earnest, it features charismatic, well-matched stars and earns its heart-wrenching sentimentality. Paper Towns, this year's Green adaptation by the same production company, is sadly inferior in almost every way. The story focuses on Quentin (Nat Wolff), a high-school senior who has long nursed a deep, unrequited love for his popular neighbor Margo (Cara Delevingne), whose moving in he describes as a miracle in an opening voice-over preamble. When Margo vanishes on the eve of prom and graduation, Quentin begins a type of investigation, desperate to interpret what she left behind in order to discern her location. The search culminates in a road trip with his best friends, Ben and Radar (Austin Abrams and Justice Smith), as well as a concerned friend of hers, Lacey (Halston Sage).

As a film, Paper Towns has one undeniable quality, and it is a potent one: Wolff is a gifted, welcoming lead with an open face, spot-on comic timing, and an ability to convey neuroses while remaining entirely grounded. He also generates a nice sense of camaraderie with Abrams and Smith. Their friendship, the sense of conversational shorthand bred by intimacy and trust, rings true in an otherwise rather false picture. Supermodel Delevingne is fine, if a bit rigid, but Margo is a disaster of a character: cruel, indulgent, navel-gazing, overly precocious, and very far from endearing. The major set piece of the first act (Margo and a nervous Quentin go on a destructive spree, complete with spray paint and dead fish, to punish a cheater who has wronged her) is intended as an empowering and poignant feat of playful disobedience, but it simply grated on me. "Just go home, you over-privileged imps," I thought. Even when she is not in a scene, the film is constructed upon Margo, her aura of "cool," and her bland declarations of angst ("paper towns for a paper girl"), and her mediocrity betrays it at several turns. This dynamic might have proven rewarding in the end if the film were more cynical (or even just a tad forcible) in its investigation of the dream-girl archetype and the way it can warp perceptions, but it never goes anywhere particularly interesting, let alone insightful, on this level. It is too cute, too soft, too ready to slip into a slow-motion montage set to a contemporary pop song at the drop of a dime. Genuine moments of anger or longing or misery never enter into the equation. Every low-key (read: dull) tension is easily soothed with one-line wisps of pop-psychology wisdom. A paper movie set in paper towns populated by paper teens.

C

What is Margo doing to get by in New York, one wonders, in-between reading Whitman and being super cool and searching for herself. Turning tricks?

This is a lot better than The Fault in Our Stars.

Its a very easy film to go through and while a couple of teenage subjects go a bit overboard in coverage, it is quite enjoyable. As publicenemy said, Delevingne is a natural actress here and the cast work perfectly off each other.

I saw it again and ended up enjoying it even more. One of the best teen films to come out in a while.