Mariel Hemingway lookalike Cara Delevingne stars as a manic, pixie dream girl next door called Margo in this hokey and dopey adaptation of the vapid teen fantasy from The Fault in Our Stars author John Green. She's an unattainable beauty with a love for mysteries and with a bad case of wanderlust who takes on the world in her own super-cool maverick way.
Naturally, the besotted boy next door, nerd hottie Quentin (Nat Wolff), trails after her like a lovesick puppy until, inevitably, she enters into the aloof realm of the cool kids in high school. Then, one sunny day, Margo does something terribly Margo and just ups and vanishes. Of course, she leaves behind a bunch of clues, which annoyingly display just how marvellously kooky and smart she really is. Walt Whitman is referenced, obscure cartographic jargon is used and, of course, it turns out that Margo, like all middle class teenage kids living in the gilded suburbs of Orlando, digs Woody Guthrie.
Paper Towns then becomes a tiresome paper trail meets shaggy dog story which sees Quentin travel up the length of the eastern seaboard of America in search of his one true love. He brings along his precocious and goofy mates, one of whom is called Radar, and another who is just a PG rip-off of Jay, the filthy-minded Billy Liar character from The In-Betweeners.
As irritating as an acne outbreak the night before your debs and with very few ideas of its own, Paper Towns is insufferable stuff. Even the most dreamy-eyed young adult should arrive at the ineluctable conclusion that this Margo is one gigantic pain in the ass.
Alan Corr
