Paper Towns

When people find out that I'm a freelance writer, the first question they always ask me is if I am currently working on a novel, and my response to this point has always been that I am nowhere near talented enough to write a book. But after seeing my umpteenth Young Adult movie in the theater last night, I am 100% certain that I could be successful writing novels for teenagers, simply because some of the crap these guys spit out these days sounds like it's written by a teenage girl who gets B pluses in her English III class (keep in mind that this take is coming from a blogger).

Some of the "best" lines from this movie include "Margo was always into mysteries, so maybe that's why she decided to become one herself" or "I realized that I was a paper girl in a paper town"; lines that will have anyone who has ever read anything more challenging than a J.K. Rowling book instantly rolling their eyes. Now I don't mean to be too hard on this movie because I know that's its target audience is teenagers and that sadly most of them can't comprehend the fact that Malcolm X was indeed NOT one of the original pioneers of hip hop, but come on; when a movie written by Kevin Smith has better dialogue than yours, that's a problem.

Paper Towns is a fairly enjoyable film as it's about teenagers being a bit rebellious and challenging the norms of society. It all starts one night when Quentin's quirky neighbor Margo sneaks into his bedroom and invites him to go on the adventure of a lifetime with her. It's a revenge mission to get back at her boyfriend who has been cheating on her the entire time and all of her friends who also played a role in it. And during this adventure, she challenges the uptight Quentin to get out his comfort zone and to finally view the world differently than he has to this point in his life.

Quentin feels like he has finally made a connection with the girl he has had a life long crush on and is ready to reveal these feelings to Margo the next day at school. The problem is that she never shows up to school and apparently has completely disappears from the face of the earth. But luckily for Quentin, Margo has left behind a trail of clues for him to find, letting him know exactly where she is.

He then decides to throw caution to the wind and goes on an adventure of his own to find her, and invites his two best friends along to be a part of it.

This movie tries its best to be the coming of age comedy/drama that everyone will be able to connect to, much like The Breakfast Club did back in the 80's, but the problem is, it's not nearly written well enough to do that. All of the kids come from this affluent neighborhood in Orlando and apparently they all have endless amounts of money, parents who are only there only to make sure they don't die, and they are all smart enough to go to Ivy League schools when they graduate.

This would be great if everyone lived in Manhattan Beach but we don't. At least have one token kid who's on welfare to be the getaway driver in a few scenes. The one scene they did have that took place in the hood involved an abandoned souvenir store where there wasn't even one crack head performing oral sex for drugs! I mean, what kind of city is this???

Anyway, more jokes bombed than not but if you're a teen, you do get to live out the fantasy of going to cool parties, having sex with hot girls in their basements, and going on impromptu road trips with your friends. So based off of that, you might find yourself liking this film and using it as inspiration to take one last random and reckless trip before the new school year starts.

And for the record,  I found Margo's best friend Lacey (Halston Sage) to be hotter and more interesting than Margo was. I rate this movie as pretty WEAK and suggest that you wait for Showtime to pick it up.