To those hopeful Paper Towns fans scourging the depths of the internet for reassurance that your new favorite movie is in fact the greatest thing ever...get out. I hate to say it, but get out. I am just as much of a fan of the book Paper Towns as you are, and if the person I described above is in fact you, you won't get anything you like out of this review. Why? Because I don't think Paper Towns is all that good of a movie. Paper Towns is about a senior named Quentin (Nat Wolff), who is in love with the girl across the street, Margo Roth Speigelman (Cara Delevingne). Margo is the adventurous type, and one evening she climbs into Q's window, and takes him on a wild revenge plot around town. Then Margo disappears, leaving clues for Quentin to find, leading to him and a few friends going on a trip to find her. The whole trick of the book is the fact that Quentin slowly started to realize that maybe the Margo that he though existed...didn't. Maybe the type of person that he fell in love with didn't exist, and that maybe she's just as conflicted and imaginary as the "paper towns" (something I will not say the function of). The whole book was a little disjointed because it's acts had identities of their own, but really tied up with a great ending. The movie however disregards any of the "Who is the Real Margo" stuff for a much more watered down shallow approach that, while still pretty funny, is unfortunately just bland. The whole mystery of Margo was at the heart of Paper Towns, and without it, the film is missing it's heart. It also causes the larger reveals that they try to pull from the novel to not make any sense, and therefore makes the film even more jilted then it could be. But I actually only caught notice of that at the end. The rest of the film was considerably charming, just enough to convince me throughout most of it's running time that it was a better movie then it really was. Now that can be attributed to the fact that the actors have a great chemistry...even if it's slightly disappointing when I realize that's all the movie had. But chemistry is chemistry, and charming is charming, and again I only started to notice the film's aimlessness near the very end of the film. You see Quentin has two friends, Ben and Radar, and when all three of them are on screen the film becomes really funny. Now it's mostly American Pie like jokes, which means it's not for everyone, but I thought it was really funny. Nat Wolff was pretty good as Quentin, but I feel Austin Abrams and Justice Smith equip themselves better. Wolff just keeps this half smirk throughout the entire film, and the others have lots of personality, with Abrams really bringing a great "class clown" routine. However, with that said Cara Delevingne was incredible. She has a subtlety to her that suits her better then the other cast members; in the parts that seem to shift the tone of the film, as well as bring in the big twist, she has a level of sincerity that might have made it work, but again the script seems all over the map. And honestly that's all I can say about Paper Towns. It's charming enough to convince the vapid teen audiences that it's a good movie, but it's in fact all over the place, even if it contains a few great performances. I give Paper Towns a 6.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |