There’s something about those last few weeks of high school when even the good kids start cutting class. Suddenly, it becomes clear that what once felt so important is about to become meaningless.
It’s in this interzone between intense structure and those first years of freedom that you’ll find Paper Towns, a tender, wise mainstream coming-of-age drama that’s still all over the place. The story is preposterous but then so is being a teenager, and while those years grow increasingly distant, I suspect the intended audience will still identify with its characters.
Nat Wolff is Q, a strait-laced kid readying for college, a medical degree and kids before he’s 30. Too nerdy and nervous to woo any girls, he was best chums with his neighbour Margo (Cara Delevingne), when they were both young. Margo has grown up to become a bit of a free spirit and libertine (inasmuch as one can be in a PG-13 film) whose frequent disappearing acts give her an air of mystery. The whole school is obsessed with Margo, but none more so than Q.
Their childhood friendship fizzled out when Q proved himself to be a stick-in-the-mud, but one night Margo presses Q into being her accomplice for a series of vengeance-driven pranks. (Someone loses an eyebrow.) It ends with a gorgeous and romantic sequence atop a Florida skyscraper. The mix of late-80s architecture, shallow focus and electronic pop is among the only moments director Jake Schreier (Robot & Frank) gets to put a little visual spin on this otherwise plain-looking film, and it snaps together perfectly.
The following morning, Q is dismayed to find Margo gone. Not missing – none of the adults seem worried – but gone. Paper Towns then takes an unfortunate detour during which Q and his two buddies Ben (Austin Adams) and Radar (Justice Smith) begin piecing together ridiculous clues. The Billy Bragg/Wilco album of unpublished Woody Guthrie songs leads them to Walt Whitman poems until finally our 21st-century young sleuths reveal that Margo has left Florida for upstate New York and a rather metaphorical paper town. A paper town is an deliberate false point on a map created as insurance against unlicensed copying. (A touch of Borges never hurt a teen drama.) After a tedious series of scenes, Q and his two comrades, accompanied by Radar’s girlfriend Angela (Jaz Sinclair) and Margo’s best friend Lacey (Halston Sage), finally hit the road.
There’s laughter, good music, hooking up (Ben has long pined for Lacey) and, eventually, the realisation that this trip is altogether ludicrous. But get good teen actors in a car with some dialogue a cut above the usual tripe, and it can’t help but be compelling. These moments, where emotions are so intense, are inherently dramatic, even if the race to profess love in time to make it to the prom seems childish in retrospect.
The best parts of Paper Towns are also the best part of being young – just hanging out doing nothing with friends who know you too well to allow for any lies. If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from John Green’s successful YA novel, it’s that poses and facades don’t guarantee happiness.
There is, however, a bit of a snag with the casting. Cara Delevingne doesn’t quite nail the spontaneous, centre-of-gravity figure that the movie sells her as. Moreover, Nat Wolff, admittedly playing something of a square, is a bit dry on screen. You need to make a little effort to meet this pair halfway and get invested in their relationship. For a film all about honesty, that act of faking it feels all the more inappropriate.
Say Anything … this ain’t, but maybe I just saw that film back when it was the perfect time for me. Will today’s teens be equally moved by Paper Towns? We’ll have to let it ride for a while then see.
• Paper Towns is released in the UK on 17 August.
