Critic Reviews

The nice thing about Paper Towns is it’s as much about the friendship between Quentin, Radar and Ben as it is about Quentin’s love for Margo, and his quest to find her after she disappears yet again.

As slick and contrived as the plotting may be from time to time, the writers and director Jake Schreier (“Robot & Frank”) throw in enough charming character moments and literal forward motion (this is a road movie, after all) to avoid getting bogged down in whiny teen solipsism. You might not believe that any of these kids exist, but you’ll enjoy hanging out with them.

There may be nothing fresh left to find in teens coming of age, but director Jake Schreier (Robot and Frank) fakes it with genuine sincerity.

Q's adventure is a passionate and creative retelling of a time-honored tale, and one that will appeal to audiences both old and new to the genre. Hughes would approve.

A satisfying look at young unrequited love, bromances, independence and letting go.

The smart script is brave enough to venture beyond yesterday’s fleeting Twitter fodder for its pop-cultural references. As a result, Paper Towns might be the only movie to ever pay tribute to Walt Whitman’s poetry, Woody Guthrie’s music and the empowering theme song from the “Pokemon” cartoon series.

The real joy of Paper Towns is the interplay among Wolff, Abrams, Smith, and eventually Halston Sage and Jaz Sinclair as Margo’s best friend and Radar’s girlfriend.

It may not subvert every cliche of the high-school romance genre, but director Jake Schreier’s coming-of-age dramedy nonetheless pulses with moving and melancholy moments.

Like a good prom date, a good high school movie just needs to keep you entertained and out of trouble for a couple hours. A great high school movie — "The Breakfast Club," "Rebel Without a Cause," "Boyz n the Hood" — will linger in your mind well into adulthood. Paper Towns...is only a good high school movie.

The result isn’t an all-the-feels, drown-us-in-tears kind of experience, but something rooted in wisdom and clarity. It’s the rare movie that can sacrifice the clean lines of fantasy and melodrama for the messiness of ordinary life — that neither burnishes nor condemns the up-down turmoil of the teenage soul, but rather lets it be.