Director: Jake Schreier
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 1.0
A (vanilla) high school kid named Quentin (Nat Wolff) is secretly in love with his (rainbow-speckled) neighbor Margo (Cara Delevingne), who's a wild child - after she gets revenge on a cheating boyfriend, she abruptly leaves town but leaves select clues behind in case anyone (namely Quentin) wants to track her down (her parents have basically given up). It's one of those standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl movies (thanks, Mr. Rabin) - Margo's mixed-up and unapologetic about it - with a safe, canned message for the young adult crowd to spread-your-wings, find-yourself and love-the-world hokum. I'll grant novelist John Green a scintilla of credit for teaching me what a 'paper town' is (it's a fake entry on a map for copyright purposes) and then promptly snatch that credit back for using it as a bland metaphor. What kind of parents let their kids just go on an impromptu road trip to New York from Florida? Revelation alert: the nerdy kid (Austin Abrams) 'wins the affection' of the beautiful girl (Halston Sage) ... such is the power of a writer's imagination!
