Title: Paper Towns
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Jake Schreier
Starring: Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne, Justice Smith
Runtime: 1 hr 49 mins

What It Is: Quentin (Wolff) has a crush on his next door neighbor Margo (Delevingne) and had since she first moved there when they were 9 years old. Now seniors in high school these two young people who used to be friends are now running in very different circles. He, an an outcast who maintains a very close knit group of two friends, Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Smith). When Margo takes Q out for a wild night of righting wrongs he thinks there’s a spark between them. So when she mysteriously disappears the following day Q thinks this mysterious girl is leaving behind clues.

What We Think: This movie is okay. It is nowhere near as good as last years John Green adaptation The Fault in Our Stars. That one knew all the right buttons to push for it’s target audience, this one is far too disjointed and jumbled. It’s equal parts mystery as it is coming of age film. From a performance standpoint Nat Wolff once again shows he can hold his own with Green’s material must that same as he did in TFIOS except this time he is front and center. Cara Delevingne doesn’t do much, but she is far from terrible. It would’ve been much nicer had she had something more to do than rebelling and pseudo philosophizing. Everyone else was good, but not great, well except for Austin Abrams. He really brought Ben to life, and was very funny.

Our Grade: B-, It stands on it’s own, but the comparisons to last years Green novel adapt will continue especially when you put one of that films prominent cast members in this film as a cameo. I’ll recommend you check this one out but don’t expect interesting cinematography, or a blindingly brilliant script. It doesn’t have that. This relies a lot on the charms of it’s leads and sadly they aren’t nearly charming enough.