Director Report Card: Jake Schreier (2015)

2. Paper Towns

What is now called "young adult literature" has existed for decades but has, over the last fifteen years or so, become a weirdly decisive topic. Franchises like "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" were cultural phenomena. The flaws of those books have become more apparent as time has passed, made all the more evident by a fan base of not-so-young adult readers who stubbornly refuse to move on. Whether this is a result of the death grip corporate nostalgia has on the world today or a sign of a growing immaturity among people who should know better is hotly debated, ad nauseum, every single day on the internet. Maybe I'm a little more in the trenches for this tiring, non-stop argument than most, being a writer type guy myself. If it's a dispiriting sign of society's on-going infantilization or simply a harmless safe space for nerdy millennials traumatized by our failing American dream, "Y.A. fiction" isn't going anywhere. The popularity of this genre is obvious in how the movement has produced its own superstars. I am talking about John Green, whose – let's-call-it "distinctive" – authorial voice and reoccurring obsessions have made him loathed by certain cultural critic types but also insanely popular. "The Fault in Our Stars," since its publication in 2012, has sold twenty-three million copies. That's more than "The Godfather," "Jaws," and "Pride and Prejudice." In a time when a lot of people don't seem interested in reading physical books at all, that's an extraordinary success. The 2014 film adaptation was also a huge hit, officially making Green's work a cultural movement of its own, ready to be heavily scrutinized and argued about. 

By which I mean John Green is a thing now, made all the more polarizing by the popularity of his YouTube presence as well. Love him or hate him, nothing succeeds like success. "The Fault in Our Stars" – which, personally speaking, I would describe thoroughly as "not for me" – becoming a best seller meant Green's other books, past and present, also became hits. The "Fault in Our Stars" movie being a blockbuster encouraged further cinematic adaptations of Green's work. While "Looking For Alaska" and "Turtles All the Way Down" were shuffled off to various streaming services, where old guys like me could safely ignore them, the movie version of "Paper Towns" came to theaters in 2015. This reignited the debate over Green's merits and flaws as a writer. All of this overlooks that the "Paper Towns" movie is also the work of director Jake Schreier, his second feature film after "Robot & Frank." Is any of the charm and preciseness that made Schreier's debut so charming visible at all in "Paper Towns" or does the overwhelmingly John Green-ness of it all supersede any other voice at work here? 

In a humble suburb outside Orlando, Florida, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen has lived his entire life across the street from Margo Roth Spiegelman. Inseparable as kids, Q and Margo would drift apart after the traumatic experience of stumbling upon a dead body. Now, as a teenager, Q is a socially awkward nerd with an unrequited life-long crush on Margo, whom he hasn't talked to in years. Unprompted, one night Q's teenage existence is interrupted by Margo climbing in his bedroom window. She leads him on a night of adventure, Q helping her get petty and whimsical revenge on her high school enemies. It reignites his crush on the girl... And then she vanishes. Margo's habit of living clues and secret messages for her little sister inflames Q's mania. He follows a series of cryptic riddles the girl left behind and comes to the conclusion that Margo has fled to Agloe, New York. That's a paper town, a place that only exists on a map but nevertheless corresponds to a real world location. Alongside his best friends Ben and Radar, Q sets out on a road trip to be reunited with the girl of his dreams. 

I can't speak for “Paper Towns: The Book” but the film adaptation exists solidly within the boundaries of its genre. That would be a specific subsection of the coming-of-age story, which I will call the end of high school narrative. Q and his buddies are about to graduate. They are the type of young people who lack any upward social mobility and the rite of passage of graduation means their lives are about to change forever. Accordingly, everything they do is heavy with importance. Radar's girlfriend, Angela, leaves on the road trip with the guys and they end up giving their virginity to each other during a stop-off. A former friend of Margo's, an extremely photogenic young lady named Lacey, slowly develops a bond with Ben during the same trip, becoming his prom date. Prom is treated with utmost importance throughout “Paper Towns,” the climax of these characters' teenage existences up to this point. Q wanting to mask Margo to prom is part of why he pursues her. All of this means that “Paper Towns” is a story full of young people learning life lessons that they will carry with them always. It's a bit like if “The Sure Thing” had “Say Anything...'s” sense of self-importance.

No aspect of “Paper Towns,” and Green's entire body of work, is more hotly debated than his use of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Born long ago, back when the AV Club was still good, the term and corresponding concept has become pervasive and overused. We are now long past the point of the phrase's creator apologizing for coining it, well into our eighteenth year of MPDG discourse. Despite the constant criticism and deconstruction and subsequent re-construction, the trope remains undying. It seems we – and by "we," I mean predominantly male screenwriters and authors and the likewise audiences they cater to – are unable to quit these obsessively quirky, psychologically vacant, fantastically aspirational ladies who devote themselves to improving the lives of sad, milquetoast white boys. Despite being made all the way in 2015, when the idea had already been run into the ground, “Paper Towns” employs the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope without any irony. This is another story of a nerdy, withdrawn but soulful young man whose life is shaken up by a young woman so effervescently eccentric that she is practically a magical entity, not of this Earth at all. 

Many elements of the character make Margo Spiegelman a textbook MPDG. Her ways are strange and inexplicable, her coming and going out of the protagonist's life like a changing wind. Her tendency to leave hints and clues behind makes her seem all the more like an otherworldly trickster, a puzzle for the hero to unravel. The string of pranks she performs that night with Q are wacky and whimsical, functioning as life lessons as much as acts of retribution. What truly makes Margo a straight example of this dehumanizing cliché is that the character refuses to come into sharp focus. Margo doesn't exist as her own person. She's a series of traits, without any interior thoughts, intentionally remaining far off and vague. We see her only as Q sees her, as a mischievous spirit and a goal to achieve. She remains a reflection of other people's thoughts and feelings, without any true depth of her own. “Paper Towns” is Quentin's story, not Margo's, and she is accordingly sidelined. 

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is like any other cliché. It's part of the writer's toolbox and can be used well, given the right circumstances and a properly skillful talent. Casting the right actress for a part, one that can be as enchanting and ethereal to the viewer as she is the character, is important. This was the break-out performance for Cara Delevingne, the model-turned-actress that Hollywood decided was its newest It Girl in the middle of last decade. Delevingne's wide-eyed appearance has a suitably fey-like look, which she matches with an energetic performance. I don't think it's enough to overcome the shortcomings of the tropes at play here. I also don't think it's Delevingne's fault. She's a decent actress and does decent work with what she's given. You understand why Q becomes so fixated on her. That “Paper Towns” leaves me asking questions like “Would I, personally, drive across the country for this girl?” suggests that the script is lacking an essential something to make its characters and premise seem fully real. 

I suppose that is my biggest problem with “Paper Towns.” During the predictable end-of-the-second-act schism where Quentin is questioning his own motivation and abandoned by his friends, I found myself wondering: What is driving this guy? What in his heart is specifically fired up by Margo? What are his goals and aspirations in life, outside of getting the girl? The film is not able to ultimately answer any of these questions. Q is devoted to Margo because the script says he is. Again, I would not blame Nat Wolff's performance for this. He's a charming enough lead, playing the role of a milquetoast nerd that is, despite his social awkwardness, capable of great courage and insight. Wolff can deliver dialogue sharply and has good chemistry with his co-stars. I don't mind following this guy around for ninety minutes, despite Quentin never quite coming to life as especially distinctive either. The star is charming but the character is ultimately not given the depth needed to make this story soar and to justify the emotions it invokes. 

A lot of “Paper Towns” was like that for me. The film comes close to rising above the formulas without ever quite getting there. Another example is the story's use of the road trip. The road trip is an inherently cinematic concept, a constantly moving narrative that is powered by the energy of local color and the romance of the open road. The cliché about road trip stories is that it's about the journey, not the destination. This is, weirdly, not true about “Paper Towns” at all. We see very little of the places Q and his boys drive through on their way to Agloe. Most of the miles passes through in montages of the boys advancing across the map. The result is a road trip movie that ends up feeling like it doesn't feature much of the actual road trip. This results in "Paper Towns" being a movie sharply divided in two, between the set-up of Quentin falling in love with Margo and the long drive to find her, the latter half clearly getting less attention. Maybe this is the result of adapting a novel, which can spend more time on digressions along the highway than a feature film required to run two hours can. 

Aside from the debatable dream girls that appear in the pages of his books, the other thing people criticize John Green for is his reliance about pseudo-profound observations about life. His characters have internal monologues full of statements about existence that seem deep to someone who hasn't read a book before. These are books striving to be meaningful, to teach the reader lessons that will stick with them forever, in poetic but accessibly quippy language. The cinematic adaptation of "Paper Towns" is full of this too. Because it's a movie, it can pair Q's passages with soaring music and wistful visuals. The final scene is montage of Quentin reflecting on what he's learned and the nature of life and how people like Margo effect those around them. Schreier's film actually does an okay job of keeping this maudlin streak from getting too intolerable before being consumed by it in the final minutes. We were a few minutes away from the credits before "Paper Towns" made me roll my eyes especially hard but that eye-rolling voided a lot of the positive feelings I had before that moment.

That's the most frustrating thing about 'Paper Towns:" it's actually a decent movie for most of its runtime. Rather than the longing he feels for Margo, the friendship Q shares with his pals is a lot more vividly depicted. Scenes of the three guys sarcastically launching into the rendition of the "Pokemon" theme song or trying to keep a drunken Ben from embarrassing himself too much at a party are highlights of the movie. Somewhere within "Paper Towns'" didactic, mildly sexist DNA, there is a charmingly sloppy, "Superbad"-esque ribald comedy about never having any friends like the ones who had at eighteen. Nat Wolff – recognizable to any Gen-Zers reading this as one half of the Naked Brothers Band – has a lived-in, energetic chemistry with Austin Adams and Justice Smith, both of whom are equally charming as Ben and Radar. Am I saying that this movie would have been better if it rejected the thesis of the book and decided to be about how the friends you already have are more valuable than the unattainable dream girl you've placed unrealistic, patriarchal expectations upon? Probably not but I would've liked it more. 

That I've mentioned Green's book and his prevailing style more throughout this review than Jake Schreier answers the question I poised at the beginning: The director of "Robot & Frank" is not able to make this material his own, belonging more to the original author than the adaptor. That's a bummer too, as Schreier continues to show a strong visual sense. David Lanzenberg's cinematography is energetic and active, often matching the youthful enthusiasm of the characters. Jacob Craycroft and Jennifer Lame's editing is similarly dynamic and animated. Following in the footsteps of Manic Pixie Dream Girl ur-text like "Garden State" and "Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World," the film has a very hip soundtrack full of specifically chosen songs, determined to make the audience feel cool and wistful for their younger days. All of which is to say that a lot of elements of "Paper Towns" work. The problem resides on a scripting level, in an unwillingness to examine the tropes it employs, a lack of depth in the protagonists, and an unearned sense of value in the messages it supposedly contains. 

By the way, paper towns – also known as phantom settlements – are an actual real world concept and Agloe is a genuine example of this interesting bit of trivia. The film explains them as copyright traps map makers would include, to catch anybody pirating their work. Many exist totally by mistake though. "Paper Towns" was not a blockbuster on the level of "The Fault in Our Stars" but was still a good sized hit. It also seems to have been mostly well received among fans of the book. In the world of page-to-screen Y.A. treatment, I suppose sentimental quirk-fests like this are preferable to wimpy supernatural romances and paint-by-numbers fantasy adventures. "Paper Towns" could have been better but fails to rise above its formulas and gets too high on its own supply for my taste. Once again, I must conclude that this stuff simply isn't for me. [Grade: C+]