Coming of age movies have found a built in audience with
teens for years. As far back as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE through THE BREAKFAST
CLUB and on, the problems faced by teens growing up has felt a similar concept
running through them while adapting to the situations faced by each successive
generation. So it’s always interesting to see what comes next as we do this
week with PAPER TOWNS.
Based on the best seller by author John Green who wrote last
years THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, this movie takes a look at life through the eyes
of narrator Quentin “Q” Jacobsen (Nat Wolff). As the film opens a younger Q
tells us about the first moment he set eyes on his new neighbor Margo Roth
Spiegelman and immediately fell in love with her. As they grow they start out
friends but a chance encounter with a suicide victim’s body changes their
dynamic. Q grows into a semi-nerd while Margo (Cara Delevingne) runs with the
popular kids, becoming the talk of her generation with the various adventures
she has supposedly gone on.
Q hangs with his two best friends Ben (Austin Abrams), a
cocky little guy who talks big about his sexual conquests which obviously have
never happened and Radar (Justice Smith) the only member of the trio to
actually have a girlfriend. The prom is coming up and only Radar has a date.
This is there life, a situation where all three never take walk off of the path
to success or dare to do anything they shouldn’t. That all changes in one
night.
One evening Q is awakened by Margo sneaking into his bedroom
window. She tells him she needs to borrow his mother’s car but he refuses.
Instead he tags along with Margo on her “missions”. They begin in a store
purchasing items for the “missions” and then begin. Each revolves around Margo
taking revenge on her so called friends after discovering that her boyfriend
has been cheating on her with another friend. As they go from place to place
their doing things which could get them in trouble but having fun at the same
time. A moment between the two is shared. And then, the next day, Margo goes
missing.
As Q tries to figure out where Margo has gone her friend
Lacey approaches him to find out where she went as well. Q begins to find
clues, the sort that Margo would use to solve the mysteries of life that have
always intrigued her. As he and his friends cipher through the various clues
Margo has left behind, Q becomes certain that she left them for him to find
her. The end result is a road trip but it is the journey that it takes to go on
the trip and the trip itself that offers the adventure these friends go on, a
trip that changes their lives.
The term “paper towns” is one Margo uses to describe life
where they all live. It references something mapmakers used long ago, false
towns they would place on maps to insure their copyright to those maps. The
towns were fake towns that didn’t exist but insured that one mapmaker wouldn’t
use the same information from another’s. For Margo it represents an empty life,
an empty existence. It also provides the group with their greatest clue.
The whole concept of the treasure hunt here makes for a lot
of fun in this film. It creates the background story that links together the
lives of the three friends, Lacey and Radar’s girlfriend along with Margo into
something that explodes their lives from living the mundane existence that they
have created for themselves and most likely will carry on till they die and
transforms it into experiencing life for perhaps the first time.
The young actors here do a wonderful job of bringing life to
what could have resulted in nothing more than cardboard cutouts. Each has their
own quirks that make them who they are but rather than those quirks being
challenges to overcome they are what make each of them special and a necessary
part to the journey.
The story is one that grabs you from the start and holds on
to you until the finale. Not only are these friends going on a journey, the
viewer is as well. In the end perhaps each viewer will find themselves looking
back in regret for a chance never taken, a journey never traveled. But the
truth is that these opportunities for adventure never end. With any luck, those
who go on this trip with Q and friends will seek out adventures of their own.
Click here to order.
