Not to discredit Delevingne-who is fine-but Paper Towns works best in her absence.
As a character she communicates with riddles, and elaborate mystical clues that, thankfully, don’t get too twee. This is Delevingne’s first large role and the model (and Suicide Squad member) plays Margo as if she were Orange Is the New Black’s Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning) but given ten suburban-steps ahead in life that is to say, as an actress, Delevingne mostly communicates with eyebrows, hair pushes, and a knowing overbite. It’ll be the most he’s strayed from his perfect path, but his construct of a perfect girl is Margo, so he goes along with it, and after a night of hijinks she disappears. When Margo discovers that her boyfriend (Griffin Freeman) is cheating on her, she invites Quentin (through his bedroom window) to assist her in getting revenge. Margo grew up and spent her teen years on the road with rock and roll bands and a group of cool kids, Quentin did his homework and planned his happiness to start exactly 12 years after high school. Quentin turned her down, and thus two roads diverged. As a child she discovered a dead man, and then researched his identity and invited the younger Quentin (through his bedroom window) to go spy on the man’s widow. Why is Margo so sought after? She’s adventurous. The larger lesson of Paper Towns is that you should allow people you love to be the people you love. Through Radar, it also acknowledges that these expectations unfairly creep into friendships, too. And you can’t get upset when they don’t fulfill your own cool girl construct. It’s the sweet-natured, non-jaded, middle class version of The Virgin Suicides, with the same lesson: you can’t ever know a girl if you’ve already constructed everything about them in your mind. Their prom dates (Halston Sage and Jaz Sinclair) are in tow, but Paper Towns is mostly about boys chasing paper-thin constructs of girls and discovering more texture. This trio of band kids embark on a road trip to find Margo after she’s run away, and it’s a road trip worth taking. But what’s coolest is the friendship between three high school boys: Quentin (Nat Wolff), Ben (Austin Abrams), and Radar (Justice Smith). What’s cool about Paper Towns is that even though she’s seen through the eyes of a teenage boy, it does allow the cool girl, the manic pixie dream girl, the Suburban Pennsatucky, Margo (Cara Delevingne), to make choices for herself.
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