Paper Towns Film Analysis

Paper Towns is not your typical romance chick flick. It is humorous, coming of age film, that explores some of the things that teenagers and young adults face, such as finding your purpose and our relationship with friends and romantic interest. The start of the film is not unlike most films of the same genre, where boy meets girl and falls in puppy love at first sight, in this case Nat Wolff as Quentin, and Cara Delevinge as Margo. The movie centers around the sudden disappearance of Margo,Q's next door neighbor and a friend that drifted apart from him, while leaving clues as which to pinpoint her location. Throughout the search, Q's view of Margo changes as he encounters the different people who knew Margo and their different visions and

It also somehow mixes the disappearance of a girl with the comedic, almost comic relief approach in the search for her. Never in the movie where you'd be afraid that Margo won't be found, something that doesn't ruin the mood of the film and instead helps the watchers to understand what the film really is about. Also, the casting of the supporting characters, specially of Halson Sage as Lacey, Margo's best friend, is on point. At the start of the film, one might dismiss her as superficial and not important to the plot, but as the movie progresses, it becomes evident that she's so much more than what she looks like, the classic "don't judge a book by it's cover saying, a nice reminder to the audience. Q's friends are funny and interesting too, as the casting and dialouge prevents on ruining the light adventure/ humorous mood throughoout the movie, even

Being a movie based on a book, Paper Towns may earn the ire of those who've already read the book as it fails to accurately put the right tone into Margo's disappearance and the sense of adventure that the book pacing portrays in noticeably faster in the movie, which fails to highlight some of the important dialogues in the book, such as the way the people around Margo see her, and the movie shows Margo's parents as more caring that they really are. I also must point out that I personally dislike Cara as Margo, because of her inexperience and lack of emotion that fails to show Margo's passionate air in the book. Also, in a way, the supporting characters, specially Ben, steal the spotlight from the protagonist and it hampers the audiences' understanding on the plight of the main