A life-affirming teenage trip
Paper Towns
K (out of 4) Starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne. Directed by Jake Schreier. 109 minutes. Opens Friday at major theatres. PG At last, a movie about teens on the cusp of adulthood that has heart, wit and soul.
In fact, Paper Towns is a movie that may remind those of us who have long left adolescence behind that there is such a thing as playing it too safe and that life’s mysteries are worth pursuing, at any age.
Skilfully adapted from the novel by John Green, who wrote the book that begat last year’s hit The Fault in Our Stars, this movie is once again about the relationship between two young people, though it doesn’t deal with anything nearly as heavy as terminal illness.
Rather, it focuses on buttoneddown Quentin (Nat Wolff), who meets free-spirited new neighbour Margo (Cara Delevingne) at the age of 7 and remains beguiled by her for the next 11 years despite the fact they soon grow apart.
It’s senior year of high school with the prom approaching as Margo shows up late one night at Quentin’s second-storey bedroom window and persuades him to embark on a risky mission that involves payback on a cheating boyfriend and some others. Then she promptly disappears.
But before she does, Margo expounds on the film’s central theme, the hazards of living in a world full of “paper towns” and people all too willing to settle for an existence of unquestioning and boring convention. Case in point: Quentin, whose own tepid game plan consists of graduating from medical school and having a wife and kids by the age of 30. Ho-hum.
With the help of his two best buds, Radar and Ben, and Margo’s ex-BFF, Lacey, Quentin is determined to track Margo down, following a trail of clues she’s left behind.
Margo has always loved a mystery and this one involves folk balladeer Woody Guthrie, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a highway atlas of North America. And before you can say “road trip,” they’re off on a lifechanging adventure.
Director Jake Schreier has assembled a sterling cast, starting with Wolff as Quentin, Q to his friends. The camaraderie between Q, Ben and Radar — all three outsiders from the popular cliques — is the best part of the film, with playful dialogue that has an authentic ring to it.
While Wolff is appealing, Austin Abrams gets the biggest laughs as the diminutive Ben, whose alleged sexual exploits with a girl from Saskatchewan are cheerfully derided by his pals, and Justice Smith is wonderfully likeable as the cerebral Radar. What’s more, all three actors look like actual teenagers. What a concept!
Another nice surprise is Halston Sage’s textured performance as Lacey, one of the “in” crowd who finds herself drawn to the oddball trio.
Delevingne exudes an appropriate- ly ethereal quality as Margo, a young woman determined to think and act outside the mainstream box of life, seeking truth in the margins.
In addition to doing a fine job matching the actors who play young Quentin and Margo with the present-day ones, Schreier also manages no small feat in making Orlando, Fla., a rather appealing setting.
The script isn’t without its credibility problems. Quentin’s mom is a rather too-permissive cipher and the teens all seem to have too much ready access to credit cards. But these are minor quibbles.
With snappy dialogue, solid performances and an ending that refuses to settle for saccharine, Paper Towns is the antidote to commonly insipid teenage fare.
It’s a film that just may cause audiences of all ages to look beyond creature comforts and safe decisions to see life through fresh eyes, as a mystery worthy of constant exploration and reflection.