A new review from The Movie Snob.

Paper Towns  (C-).  I did not realize that this movie was based on a book by the same guy who wrote The Fault in Our Stars, a/k/a Cancer Kids in Love.  I didn’t realize it until I looked at the movie poster after seeing the movie, even though the movie is preceded by an odd clip of that guy (John Green) saying how excited he is that Paper Towns got made into a movie and how much he hoped that we would like it.  Well, John, sorry to say I thought it was sort of a let-down.  Our protagonist is a bookish, strait-laced high-school senior named Quentin (Nat Wolff, The Fault in Our Stars).  He is hopelessly in love with the Girl Across the Street, Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne, Anna Karenina).  They were childhood friends, you see, but they grew apart as they approached puberty, and she got cool and beautiful and he didn’t.  Suddenly, she recruits him to help her in a night of vandalism and revenge against some of her “friends,” which only makes him love her more, and then she disappears.  So Quentin and his buddies try to figure out where she went, so he can be reunited with his Manic Pixie Dream Girl, as I believe the expression goes.  Quentin is kind of a dud, and the plot is not terribly believable or engrossing (although I was mildly curious to see if we’d find out where Margo had run off to and why).  You have my permission to skip it.