The 305-page novel “Paper Towns” by John Green is propelled by a sense of urgency and a thorny mystery.
The 109-minute movie “Paper Towns” all too often seems inert, even as it condenses clues to its core puzzle about an 18-year-old girl’s whereabouts. On the page, she borders on unlikable; on screen, she is elusive, virtually until the end.
Mr. Green is beloved as the author of “The Fault in Our Stars” about two teens with cancer who fall in love and try to live to the fullest despite the prospect of early death. The movie starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort was shot in Pittsburgh, which doubled for Indianapolis on screen, and Amsterdam. The cast also included Nat Wolff, as a teen losing his eyesight to cancer.
Starring: Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne.
Rating: PG-13 for some language, drinking, sexuality and partial nudity, all involving teens.
This story is set in Orlando, Fla., where Quentin or Q (Mr. Wolff) thought it miraculous that he lived across the street from Margo Roth Spiegelman (Carla Delevingne), an enigmatic, beautiful and popular classmate. Although once close friends, they grew apart and now travel in vastly different social circles.
One night, as their senior year is winding down, Margo invites Quentin to join her on a clandestine adventure that will require him borrowing his parents’ van. Oh, and driving Margo around, and helping her to right some wrongs, and wrong some rights.
They deliver payback Margo style (silly vandalism and embarrassing pranks), and make it back home without being punched by the victims or collared by the police, but she doesn’t show up for school the next day. Her exasperated parents, who point out she is 18 and this is the fifth time she’s run away, say, “She’s not missing, she’s gone.”
Lovelorn Quentin, with the help of his best friends Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Justice Smith), decide to look for clues Margo may have left and find her — even as the other high school seniors are consumed with parties and prom. Quentin, who has never felt more alive than during his escapades with Margo, embarks on a quest with no guarantee of reward or romance at the end.
Ms. Delevingne, a model turned actress and Instagram magnet who looks like one of the Hemingways, doesn’t get much screen time while Mr. Wolff looks older than his buddies but pulls off the part of a well-behaved young man who learns what it means to bend or break a few rules. Fans of “TFIOS” will be happy to know one of those key actors has a cameo here.
Like many movies based on young adult novels, “Paper Towns” makes the parents almost invisible or bit players in their teens’ lives. While “TFIOS” was remarkably true to the book, director Jake Schreier (“Robot & Frank”) and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber take some license, omitting an illicit trip to Sea World and tinkering with the order of events at school year’s end.
No movie has to be slavishly faithful to it source, and that’s not why “Paper Towns” (taking its title, in part, from a mapmaker’s trick designed to protect against copyright infringement) never takes flight. It fails to give moviegoers a robust portrait of Margo, even in all her confusion and uncertainty, and doesn’t fully explore the book’s themes and multiple metaphors about being connected and seeing others for who they are.
Like life itself, it ends up asking more questions than it answers.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. Read her blog: www.post-gazette.com/madaboutmovies.
First Published: July 24, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
