Papertowns Cast- a critique by Beyond The Trailer

Full-text transcript of the Paper Towns review:

[00:00:00] Time to see if John Green is a one hit wonder or the real deal. You’re watching Beyond the Trailers review of paper towns.

[00:00:08] From the moment I saw armato Russ Begelman, I was madly in love. Margaret and I were practically strangers to this one night.

[00:00:15] But ergo, I need to borrow your car wash. I have nine things I need to do tonight, and more than half of them require getaway driver. My boyfriend has been cheating on me. Revenge plot against.

[00:00:31] Housewares, it looks still the fault in Our Stars was a pop culture phenomenon, the hotly anticipated adaptation stormed the box office with a number one debut of almost 50 million, rivaling flashier fellow young adult adaptations like The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner. The 12 million dollar weepie went on to earn over 300 million worldwide and actually managed to beat out fan favorite movies, The Hunger Games and Guardians of the Galaxy for best picture at the MTV Movie Awards. Shailene Woodley also beat Jennifer Lawrence for Best Female Performance, and Woodley and Ansel Elgort won Best Kiss as well. Now Hollywood loves a bandwagon, so naturally John Green’s remaining novels were either snapped up or studios already own. The film rights were hurried into production. The film rights to paper towns were acquired by Fox right before the studio release. The Fault in Our Stars, obviously very confident in the film, already hoping that lightning will strike twice paper towns as the same producers and screenwriters as the fault in Our Stars and promotes Nat Wolff from best friend to male lead. But that’s perhaps the biggest question mark. Here are Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne as big a draw as wordly and Elgort. The industry is predicting no, with paper counts expected to open with about 20 million less and that pixels opening the same weekend will take the number one spot instead. But the fault in Our Stars didn’t have a lot of staying power at the box office, dropping more than 60 percent in its second weekend. While word of mouth could make paper towns a sleeper hit and as green or at least Hollywood hopes to build them into a brand, not every movie needs to be a home run. Securing a few bases. We’ll do paper towns just needs not to be a strike.

[00:02:20] So first off, not all fans. I owe you an apology because he kills it here. It’s hard to believe that this is the same uncharismatic sourpuss from the fault in Our Stars playing. The good guy looks good on him. In fact, it looks good on the entire cast. This is probably the best ensemble cast I’ve seen in a film in a while, both in terms of likeability and talent. And yes, I’m including Antman in that, because the difference here is that everyone in the cast gets a chance to shine. Now, there’s also something about the cast that speaks to a current problem that many of you are having with mainstream Hollywood. Yet the ad campaign for the film fails to to turn in that regard. And I’m talking about diversity. Last week I talked about Trainwreck and how Judd Apatow with Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy and Lena Dunham is trying to change the stereotype of what’s a leading actress and also with people like Bill Hader. What’s a leading actor in? Some of you responded to that. Hey, everyone, still white. What’s really changed? And so here in paper towns, well, it’s not the lead characters. Two of the supporting characters, a black couple, a black teenage couple, are wonderfully well realized, not only with two talented actors, but to really great, realistic, fleshed out, non stereotypical roles. The whole cast again, though, is fantastic. And more on that in a moment. But this bringing this diversity so naturally to the film should have been one of the selling points for paper towns.

[00:03:56] But no, oddly, the ad campaign for paper towns is as obsessed with Margo Roth’s Spiegelman as Nat Wolf’s character is. And by by doing that, they don’t, you know, spotlight the film’s best selling points, which are not only the diversity, but that it’s really kind of a high school version of Stand By Me. And the reason I say kind of is because the movie is almost divided. You know, it starts out about Nat Wolf’s character and his, you know, his infatuation with Margo Roth’s Spiegelman and why she’s worthy of such infatuation. But then it totally delves into this like buddy movie, which is the better of the two films. And it even gets a little bit confusing because toward the end they’re like, man, the other three guys have been friends since we were babies. And I’m like, well, where were you guys at the flashback, the beginning of the movie? Or for the first like twenty minutes of the movie. I mean, they’re on the periphery. But, you know, I think that that time would have been better spent adding to that storyline rather than the Margo Rock Spiegelman storyline. And I think that, you know, maybe this just isn’t a great adaptation of the book. I’d be curious to know if the book succeeds at all the tasks that it put before it. And I think that one of those tasks is trying to dispel the myth of the manic pixie as women are so often portrayed in popular media.

[00:05:21] And that’s how they’re at first portrayed in this movie. And then the film tries to say, oh, but look, these women are real people, but it makes a really classic. Error and film making and any visual storytelling medium and that it tells instead of shows, I mean, you have the female characters literally say I’m more than a pretty face, but they never show how they’re more than a pretty face. And I think that any success this film has with showing these female characters are more than just the dream girls that the male characters first envisioned is to the credit of the casting director, because the actresses themselves are so down to earth and so likeable. And you you imagine that in real life they are really dynamic personalities and interests that are showcased here. So I think because the film has such a split personality that it doesn’t become an instant team classic, but it’s still a good team classic. And like any good, respectable teen classic, it makes excellent use of its soundtrack. Also, I’ve talked so much about the actors here. I’m sure you’re curious about Cara Delevingne, who is getting so much attention right now because her star is definitely on the rise and she’s the most famous person in this movie. She’s a model. She’s friends with Taylor Swift. She’s on suicide squad, but she’s not the star of this film.

[00:06:40] And I think to the director director’s credit, he doesn’t try and make her the star of the movie. It does result in a movie with a split personality. But at least it kind of corrects that mistake as the film goes on and focuses on what the film is really supposed to focus on, focus on, which is what I guess the message of the movie is like, that Wolf’s character had the wrong focal point. But I think that the points aren’t made as strongly because the movie is just as distracted, like the storyteller in this case, the screenwriter and director or with a novel, the novelist are supposed to be a little bit smarter and be a little more omniscient than the lead character. Right. You want the lead character to have flaws, not to have those flaws carried over into the storytelling, but also I think that Cara Delevingne deserves some credit here as well, because she’s a very good team player. She’s a very good ensemble player. She doesn’t try and show off or take over the film. She also has a very natural, understated performance. And I was very impressed with her, although I feel we are giving her more attention than the other actors, because, again, every actor here, male and female, was very talented. And because of that and because some of the dialogue was really good and because there were some good ideas introduced here, including what paper towns are, which was one of the most interesting things in the movie.

[00:07:55] I don’t want to ruin it here because it was a really cool reveal while watching the film. And like one of the best things about the film, or if you don’t want to watch paper towns, which you don’t have to, you can just Google it. But that’s my advice to you. You don’t have to watch paper towns. But I would keep an eye on all the talent involved here in front of and behind the camera. I definitely want to see more from everyone, including John. Great. I think he has a very bright future in the teen genre. But as for this movie itself, it’s kind of a paper town. And when you find out what a paper town is, you’ll you’ll know what exactly what I mean. But I, I would say that if you really want to watch something, be it in the theater right now or later on down the line on an airplane or streaming, this is a very solid choice. All right. So that’s my review of paper towns. I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on the film, both those of you who didn’t read the novel like myself and those of you who have read the novel, what did you think of the the way they adapted that material? All right. Thank you so much. You can check out some other episodes right now.