I did do a previous review to a movie called "San Andreas", but I really wasn't very proud of it, but i do enjoy making reviews so I decided to try again, this time with Paper Towns.
Please don't judge this very harshly being that I'm fourteen year old girl with no experience in the movie background. I read the book over two years ago, so I'm not going to make any comparisons to the book, because frankly I don't remember all the details. Everything underlined is more of criticism.
SPOILERS AHEAD
General Info:
Title - Paper Towns
Initial Release - July 24, 2015
Director - Jake Schreier
Genre - Thriller, Romance, Drama, Mystery
Summary:
Margo Roth Spiegalman (Cara Delevingne) is a daring and confident girl who at a young age moves next to a very shy boy names Quentin (Nat Wolff). They instantly become friends and start going on amazing adventures together, until they slowly start drifting away. By the senior year of high school they are practically strangers. One night Margo knocks on this door and asks to go on another adventure with him, they have an amazing night, but the next day, Margo has disappeared and has left clues for Quentin to follow in order to find her.
Plot:
Let's start from when Margo knocks on Quentin's door and asks him to help her out with her revenge plan. Lacey and Becca are Margo's best friends, and Jase is her boyfriend. Apparently Jase has been cheating on Margo with Becca for a while and Lacey (who knew) never told Margo a thing. Eventually Margo finds out and this is when the revenge plan comes in. Margo tells Quentin that he needs to drive her first to a supermarket to get supplies, Q hesitates a lot, but agrees.
At the supermarket they get a few things and the first stop is Becca's house, where Jase is currently in sleeping with Becca. They first put sort of a lock on Jase's car, so he can't get in. Then Margo calls Becca's father and tells him his daughter is sleeping with someone in the basement. See, this is where I question, how did Margo know they were sleeping in basement together on a school night? I decided to overlook this a bit because I assumed with Margo being this smart, she did her homework. Becca's dad rushes downstairs, and then Jase runs out naked, holding his junk, and just at the perfect moment Q snaps a picture of Jase naked. One thing I didn't get was, if Jase was running, holding his junk, why would he take his hands of that area? He obviously saw something, and I would imagine the first thing he would want to do is protect exactly that area. Anyways, Jase runs to his car and can't get in. Then Q and Margo go inside the house, throws a catfish under Beccas bed (I think) and spray paints the letter M.
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| Margo and Q at the supermarket |
Next stop is Lacey's house. They saran rap Lacey's car, and when the time comes to spray paint the letter M onto the car, Margo hands over the paint to Q, which hesitates for a while to do it, but finally has the balls to do so. I should also mention Margo is leaving notes, and she has this theory that the letters in the middle should also be capitalized, so she writes with random capitalized letters.
They lastly go to Chuck (Jase's best friends house) and the plan is to shave on of his eyebrows. Margo picks the house lock and walks right in. They go up to Chucks room and Margo gives the honors of shaving Chuck's eyebrow to Q, which again hesitates but does do after a while. Margo spray paints the letter M, takes of the shaving cream from Chuck's face revealing a shaven eyebrow, he then wakes up and they both run out of the house closing Chuck's door. Beforehand, they had put vaseline on Chuck's door knob so he can't open it. Margo and Q did make a lot of noise when leaving the house and I found it extremely weird that Chuck's parents didn't wake up.
Then to finish it all off, they went to the SunTrust building, which Q once again hesitated to do. Turns out Margo knows the security and they walk right in. While in the top of the building, Margo points out how she thinks their town is a paper town and that everyone in it is paper people. Then some very convenient slow dance music is playing and Q asks Margo to dance. Hold up, the guy that was scared to spray paint an M onto a car now is asking the girl he is in love with to dance? Wow, adrenaline. They then go home and Q sleeps.
The next day his mom wakes him up and is not in the least surprised that he has just slept in his clothes. He goes to school the next few days and realizes that Margo is missing. Oh I forgot to mention that Jase threatens to beat up Q but is tames by the picture of him naked on Q's phone. Q hold the phone right up to Jase's face and somehow Jase does not feel the urge to grab it and delete it.
One day while at home with his two best friends Ben and Radar, Q sees there is a new poster hung up on Margo's window. It is a Woody Guthrie album poster. The three friends look him up and find out he lives in New York, they then bribe Margo's little sister Ruthie to let them into Margo's room. They find the Woody Guthrie album which has a song called "Walt Whitman's Niece", which they then find a book by Walt Whitman called Leaves of Grass, which leads them to a poem in the book called "Song of Myself" which has some verses circled and highlighted. One of the lines in poem is about a unhinged door, he does this to his door and finds and address.
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| Q, Ben and Radar. |
The three friends follow the address that leads to a very creepy place which has written "You Go TO The Paper Towns And You Never Come Back'. So we know that Margo was there. The three get creeped out and leave. A couple days later Q wants to go back to this place but his friends rather go to Jase's party, so Q goes alone. There he finds a space where something was once hung up. He gets a call from Radar and decides to go to the party where he finds a map and believes thats what was once hung up. He takes Radar and a drunk Ben to the creepy place where they are so scared they decide to sing, ugh this part was amazing. They hand up the map and it fits perfectly, and even has a few holes in it from pins that were once stuck. They get to the conclusion that Margo is in Agloe, New York which is a paper town. Lacey which had previously shown interest in finding Margo had followed them to this place and they all decide to go look for Margo.
So they all go on this road trip (Quentin, Ben, Lacey, Radar, and Angela which is Radars girlfriend). The trip is awesome and I'm not going into much detail with it. One thing I found weird was the fact that everyones parents were cool with it, because mine would literally kill me, and where did the money for gas and clothes come from? I didn't know they just carried around a lot of money because none of them dropped home to pick up any cash.
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| Angela, Lacey, and Q buying food for the road trip. |
When they finally get to Agloe, they find out that Margo is not there and wait around for an hour. Q wants to stay for longer but all his friends want to leave to get back in time for prom. After a big fight, his friends leave and Q is left waiting for Margo. After a while he decides she isn't really there and walks to the nearest town to buy a bus ticket home. While in a store buying chips he sees someone that looks a lot like Margo and follows her, it does turn out to be Margo. Margo isn't very happy to see Q and says that she did leave clues but they weren't exactly for him. This is when I slightly flip out.
What do you mean the clues weren't for him? There was a poster on your window that faced his window where you never hung up anything, and an address in his door hinge and the clues weren't for him? And this was a very good elaborated plan, like when did you have the time to think about all of this? The way I understood it, you had found out about Becca and Jase that day, and you decided to leave that night. So you just thought of everything on the spot?
Anyways, Margo buys Q a milkshake and they disscuss everything. Then they kiss, Q gets on the bus back home and goes to prom. The ending was really cute but I'm not going into too much detail.
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| Margo and Q saying goodbye in Agloe, New York |
Cinematography: No problems.
Writing: No problems.
Set/Costume Design: No problems.
Soundtrack: Fricken amazing.
Characters: I'm probably gonna get a lot of hate for this but I don't think that Cara Delevingne was a very good choice for Margo. She is gorgeous but I felt like the American accent was a bit forced and she just looked a lot older and way too mature for Q. I know she is only two years older than Nat Wolff, but I don't know, it didn't really work for me.
I did enjoy this movie and would definitely recommend it.
Leticia xx,
(le-ti-sia)
