Paper Towns

There’s a lot of hand-wringing right now over teens having a distorted view of sex because of the freely available porn online.

Paper Towns, the latest screenplay from 500 Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now writers Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter, is too bashful to get into sex. It’s after another fantasy: the unreal expectation of romance. However this adaptation of John Green’s (The Fault In Our Stars) novel wants to have its cake and eat it.

Like Joseph Gordon Levitt in 500 Days, the problem with Nat Wolff’s play-it-safe college-bound teen Quentin is that he’s built neighbour/love of his life Margo (Delevingne) up in his head to such an extent the girl couldn’t possibly live up to it. While Zooey Deschanel did everything to deconstruct Gordon Levitt’s grande notions of love, Margo perpetuates her legend: she creeps into Q’s bedroom in the middle of the night; she sticks her head out the car window so the wind blows through her hair in slow motion as the epic soundtrack glistens; she listens to Woody Guthrie and reads Walt Whitman. She’s wordy, she’s mysterious and she’s attainable. Only M83 (feat. Bruce Springsteen) could do her justice.

But not a thing about her rings true. She’s an unadulterated male fantasy. It would be one thing if the writers were out to teach Quentin a lesson - that love isn’t perfect/she’s not perfect/no one is perfect - but every time it comes close to this, Paper Towns checks back and revels in the Myth of Margo again. The ending bounces back and forth on this but up until then it’s a likeable ride.

When Margo disappears, Quentin believes she has left clues in books and record covers in her room as to her whereabouts and so he ropes in mates Ben (Abrams), Radar (Smith), Radar’s girlfriend Angela (Jaz Sinclair), and Margo’s former friend, and Ben crush, Lacey (Halston Sage), hops in his parents car and track her down.

It has its problems. The inconsistent message, the belated morph into a road movie takes some adjusting to, the Nicholas Sparks for teens glossiness, and the moments when the fun is forced (the Pokémon singalong, the car peeing, the six-minute pit stop) but Paper Towns gets by on charm – it’s softer, nicer, prettier, more intent on drama than its more rowdy counterparts; the last teen road trip movie was Sex Drive! The low key, introspective nature is appealing and there’s decent chemistry between all concerned. Wolff has a naturalness to him – following on from his an eye-catching performance in Palo Alto - and if Delevingne is channelling Emma Stone here then Wolff is doing his best 80s John Cusack. No bad thing.