Papertowns Review- a critique by What The Flick

Full-text transcript of the Paper Towns review:

[00:00:10] I welcome to what the flick. Everybody I met actually, Alonso drolly Christie Lumiere. The movie is Paper Towns and I am playing the role of Ben Mankiewicz, I think

[00:00:19] I’m going to tell you lot about. So Paper Towns is a coming of age. High school comedy drama in suburban Orlando comes to us from John Green, who wrote The Fault in Our Stars. So Nat, that, Wolf, is kind of a nerdy kid. And one day when he’s young, this adorable little girl moves in across the street and they become buddies. That’s when they were 10. Now they are seniors in high school and he’s still kind of a nerd and she is the hot rebel bad ass. He’s played by Nat Wolff. She’s played by car Adam Levine. And it’s what happens one night when they go on these magical adventures and what happens the next day. Take a look.

[00:00:54] She was in arguably the most gorgeous creature that God had ever created. Margot’s life was a series of unbelievably epic adventures. Are you going to spend the rest of high school pining for this girl? A senior year drew to a close and I were practically strangers. Until this one night, the

[00:01:11] Go I need to borrow your car. I have nine things I need to do tonight.

[00:01:15] Can you just get your boyfriend to do it?

[00:01:17] Ex-boyfriend. My boyfriend has been cheating on me. Revenge plot against two.

[00:01:28] I can’t believe you just said that take the picture now came out, that was fun to feel my heart beating on my chest.

[00:01:37] That is the way you should feel your whole life

[00:01:40] Before it’s a

[00:01:41] Paper town, paper, houses and papers, people. Everything’s up there,

[00:01:45] Of course, aren’t you? Think is going to be different. I really hope so. I always loved mysteries. Maybe she loved you so much. She became one.

[00:01:57] She’s gone. Was I’m so Margo.

[00:02:01] You were with her her last night. It has to mean something.

[00:02:05] There’s something in Margo’s window. She left little clues like breadcrumbs. I found something I think she’s sending you to find me. Take a risk. Stop playing it so safe. Maybe that’s what she’s been trying to tell me the whole time. What can I say? One mission.

[00:02:29] You love her son? I do. We’ve got. The future is for members.

[00:02:44] So this is basically car Delevingne doing Emma Stone doing a manic pixie dream girl, I see.

[00:02:50] I like her. I disagree. I think I think this whole movie is about unpacking the manic pixie dream girl. Right.

[00:02:58] Which we think she is at first.

[00:02:59] Well, sure. Yes, that’s that’s what’s being sold to us. But ultimately, what I what I like about this movie, among other things, is that the people in high school that we think have it all together and that, you know, are the sort of gleaming, more adult than us and more experienced than us. They also have their own like back baggage of crap that they’re carrying around.

[00:03:21] We’re all being judged inappropriately. Sure. All right. John Hughes movie kind of thing, you explore differently.

[00:03:26] Exactly. That even the prom queen has issues, you know, and so I kind of dug it on that level. I like the you know, the movie sort of becomes this sort of scavenger hunt road trip of trying to kind of figure out what her next moves are. And this nerdy guy kind of chasing the dragon of feeling alive for that one night after having spent his entire high school life kind of buttoned down and hitting the books. I was really charmed by this movie. I did not really care for fault in Our Stars all that much because I didn’t OK, not that I buy these characters anymore, but these are all like idealized teenagers. But the one the one the lead guy in fault in our stars I just found so repellent. Lee Smug and

[00:04:06] Gaut.

[00:04:07] Yes, it was the character more. I mean, the actor Han Solo. Yeah. Anyway, the character

[00:04:13] By Han Solo is

[00:04:15] Whatever the character’s name was, he got on my nerves. But these kids, as much as I found them phony, I did at least find them engaging. You know,

[00:04:22] I found them engaging once Cara Delevingne disappears. Oh, I love the friendship between the three guys, Nat Wolff and Austin Abrams and Justice Smith are these three buddies since their earliest days. And they are nerds, but they are so well drawn and they all have very distinct personalities and they have wonderful chemistry with each other. And so I feel like, yes, we’re supposed to enjoy and sort of seize on the moments where he’s with her and they’re having this all night adventure. But I feel like the movie really, really picks up once it becomes this mystery. And once they go on this road trip together and you see how their friendship is fortified and changes and

[00:04:57] Well and her being gone for most of the film makes sense because it’s really about the idea of her more than it is about her and her mythology. Her. Exactly. So, yeah, he thinks of her as being this like ticket to excitement or whatever. But he does have these great friends and they do go on this nutty adventure with them and stuff. And and the film has a good pace to it. You kind of, you know, as a road trip, it breezes along in the right in the right way, is directed by the guy who made Robot and Frank, which I like that good. Yeah. Yeah. That it he’s a little Sundance movie. Yeah. So yeah. I mean this is you know, I’m not going you know, I in my review on the wrap I said there’s those teen movies that you relate to because they’re so honest and believable and they really take you back. And then there’s the sort of idealized version of what you wish your teenage years had been like. And this is definitely in that category. But as that kind of movie, it’s a fun one.

[00:05:47] Right. And you can see sort of where it draws from the tropes of previous teen movies. I’m sure I mentioned John Hughes earlier. You got the big bash at the wealthy guys, right? You have zero parental supervision. You see the mom drop Nat Wolff off at school in the morning, but that’s pretty much her entire involvement in his life. She’s like, oh, sure, take my van all the way up to New York, three day trip, whatever. And this is a movie that I really liked, but I would have loved if I were thirteen. Totally like the poignancy and the teen angst. I would have really felt like, oh my gosh, this speaks to me. And now I’m old and cynical is how it is. But I don’t really know.

[00:06:27] I could still recognize the elements in it that make it fun. And I you know, I lament that this probably won’t do as well as the fault in Our Stars, because teenagers love nothing more than to see themselves as beautifully tragic and doomed. But I hope that they will maybe check this one out because I dream does have a huge following. True. You know, they’re selling this movie that it’s a John Grisham movie, you know, his fans. And it’s this will show up in droves. And it’s the same screenwriters that did follow stars. They also did 500 days of summer

[00:06:54] And the sweetness and poignancy to it. But it doesn’t feel cloying, does it feel forced? Yeah. I mean, a lot of that has to do with Nat Wolff told me there’s a great naturalism to him. He reminds me of a young Adam Goldberg facially, somewhat ish, but there’s a sweetness to him and intelligence and just he’s authentic.

[00:07:12] Yeah. No, I like all the you know, you mentioned the friends, also the two the two female characters that tagalong. Yes. Or a lot of fun. And they have so they bring some interesting things to the table. But yeah. Not Wolf, I think is terrific. I mean, he’s been acting since he was a fetus. I think, you know, he was on a Nickelodeon show was really great and disturbing in Palo Alto last year, if you saw that one.

[00:07:34] He was also an admission, which is not good. Tina Fey. Oh, yeah. That wasn’t there.

[00:07:39] Like he’s in the barn and everything and. Once I get this movie, I really was shocked at how much I enjoyed myself and I think I

[00:07:49] Should give it a shot. I agree. So what’s your number?

[00:07:51] That I gave it to seven point

[00:07:52] Eighty seven point four average of seven point six to make math easy. What is

[00:07:56] It? Seventy three percent of the time

[00:07:58] They’ll find it.