High school senior Quentin Jacobsen has done his best to keep his life safe and predictable. Q, as his friends call him, has a delicately self-crafted life-plan that involves Duke, med school, finding a wife and having kids all by the age of 30. He enjoys the simplicity of a small comfort zone, hard work, and having it all figured out.
Enter the free-spirited and lovely Margo Roth Spiegelman, Quentin’s longtime crush and neighbor who hasn’t given him the time of day in years… until now. Early in the film she knocks on Q’s bedroom window and beckons him to be her getaway driver for nine mysterious tasks she has planned around their hometown of Orlando. After a night of adventure that is poised to change Quentin’s life for the better, Margo disappears, leaving behind a set of clues that are just as enigmatic as she is.
Thus begins the delightful film Paper Towns, the latest cinematic adaptation of a John Green novel (The Fault In Our Stars) to hit the big screen. While it sounds like a typical teen romance, the film is better described as a coming-of-age mystery and adventure. As with any good coming-of-age film, each lesson learned by the main characters in Paper Towns reverberates through the life and memory of the viewer. The film does particularly well with this. Lead actors Nat Wolff (Quentin) and Cara Delevingne (Margo) deliver good, if not excellent performances in what looks to be breakout roles for both. The supporting cast of an eclectic group of friends is also fun to watch. Following their journey, the film explores the heights and depths of friendship through the lens of truly getting to know someone.
Despite the above strengths, Paper Towns often feels like a good movie that could have been incredible. Making the jump from long novel to two-hour film is difficult, but even so, the movie feels too condensed at times. Charming scenes are often rushed in hopes that well-written one-liners will sustain the “take a risk” vibe instead of thoughtful dialogue. The supporting cast often fails to command a scene, which is necessary when the main character is an introspective, thoughtful type and the other strong actor’s character is missing. There is, however, plenty that makes Paper Towns worth seeing.
One of the scenes early in the film offers one of the most motivating clips of any flick this summer. After the epic completion of their nine tasks across the city, Margo has a bit of advice for Q as they stand alone in the middle of a night-covered street. “Your comfort zone is right here,” she claims as she measures out two inches with her index finger and thumb. “All the things you want are way out there. The way you felt tonight– that is the way you should feel your whole life.” The scene’s excitement is contagious as Q’s safety net is ripped open and he sees for the first time what was obscured: a courageous life of adventure, taking risks, and finding love. At that moment, Margo Roth Spiegelman is exactly what Q needed to escape his repetitious suburban bubble.
At first Margo seems to be the quintessential “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” the trope created by film critic Nathan Rabin to describe the too-good-to-be-true female film character that is only used to lift the main, male character out of his funk, in this case, Quentin’s mundane and routine life. “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” rightfully gets a bad rap as it tends to be reductionary – it teaches us that people can be encapsulated by simplified labels and then exploited to suit our own needs. The brilliant irony of Paper Towns is that Margo’s character is used to condemn the very idea behind the “MPDG.”
There is a great example of this irony at the end of the film which I won’t ruin for you. But there is a small taste of it early on. In a terrific scene that involves dancing and a stirring dialogue, Margo briefly laments to Q that the people around her are two-dimensional, calling them “paper people” in a paper town. She means they are all so boring and to her, settling down in a similar suburban lifestyle would be tragic. Here, Margo, who at times is presented as a simplified “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” is herself reducing others to elementary labels.
Over time Quentin begins to discover that Margo’s classification of others is a retreat and falls short. Subsequently there are many beautiful parts of the film as he learns that treating a person as a flat object robs him of the enjoyment of truly getting to know someone. Ultimately, Paper Towns is about a boy who learns to value the stories and complexities of those around him.
As Q grasps this and comes of age, the viewer is warned of the danger that comes with seeing someone as a two-dimensional, static piece of paper. The film invites us to venture into the magnificent world of viewing others as the three-dimensional, dynamic, and label-shedding beings that are worth the time to get to know. To prove the point, as the intricacies of Margo are revealed, the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” crumbles as it no longer fits her or anyone else.