Here at The Comeback, a recurring feature called “The Millennial Review” has had young people reviewing movies like Top Gun and Point Break, classics that were released so long ago that it was before the millennials’ time. In the spirit of equal time, I, an old, will spend part of the summer reviewing movies (and other things) geared toward the millennial.
Paper Towns, the 2015 movie based on a John Green book that grossed $363,000 fewer than Entourage, is one of two movies.
1. It’s National Treasure for a virgin, who instead of finding clues that lead him to an unimaginable treasure, finds clues that lead to him the girl he has always loved after she ran away from home. And this is just me, but the crap Nicolas Cage figures out in his movie seems way more believable than what this teen figures out here. He’s like the Sherlock Holmes of horny lovelorn teens.
2. It’s a cautionary tale about socially awkward white teen males and how they deal with rejection from girls in high school. It shows how when fearing for her safety, a girl runs away from home to escape the unwanted attention from a neighbor boy that wanted to be more than her accomplice in a series of late-night, one-time crimes. So it’s like Sleeping With The Enemy where physical violence is replaced with a road trip.
I don’t hate this movie. I don’t get the teen/millennial fascination with it, of course, as I’m old as hell and now even more aware of how far removed I am from my youth. But I can sort of see where you people would like it. It’s actually better than the other movie based on a Green book — The Fault In Our Stars — but it’s still a mish-mosh of movies.
• There’s the standard unrequited teen love thing.
• There’s the “we are graduating high school and this is it” thing.
• There’s the road trip thing.
• There’s the “discovering who you are and whatever” thing.
I would have rather watched one of those movies than this one, but there’s no character you hate. There’s no Elgort Factor, although the main character is mildly creepy, as he chases a girl that has wanted almost nothing to do with him across nearly a dozen state lines. It’s easy to see how a slow dance in an office building threw him off, but she sent a clear message when she ran away, buddy.
On that note, let’s meet the high school seniors played by adults in this movie.
THE CHARACTERS
Quentin (Nat Wolff, 21) — He’s the awkward teen version of Nic Cage that’s probably been masturbating to his neighbor for at least six years. Despite admitting to not speaking to her for nine years — NINE YEARS! — he has decided he is in love with her. This is less a romance and more the beginning of a tragic situation. But it’s a movie, so he’s the hero.
Margo (Cara Delevinge, 23) — In Quentin’s defense, maybe he’s lost his way mentally because a very attractive 23-year-old woman is walking around his high school. Margo is a sociopath and there’s an argument to be made she’s a bad person. Our introduction to her involves a series of crimes, which will we get to later. Five years after this movie ends, Margo is very likely dead or addicted to drugs.
Ben (Austin Adams, 19) — A weird mix of Michael J. Fox, Mackenzie Astin and Anthony Michael Hall, he has no business being liked by anyone of the opposite sex in this movie. But since the author of these books is a deranged man with even less understanding than me when it comes to interacting with women, he’s supposed to be likable.
Radar (Justice Smith, 20) — He shouldn’t be friends with Quentin and Ben. He’s well-adjusted and treats his girlfriend well. If this really was high school, he’d have stopped talking to those guys the second he started going out with Angela.
Angela (Jaz Sinclair, 21) — There’s not much to her. She represents people growing up. She gets grossed out by Ben peeing in a car.
Lacey (Halston Sage, 22) — Maybe the worst character of the bunch. She’s not necessary to the plot. Much like Margo, she’s whiny and miserable throughout most of the movie. Let’s get to that now.
MARGO AND LACEY: F OFF
These two girls suck. They are the most popular girls in school, but woe is them, no one looks beyond their staggering beauty to see the real them! Boo freaking hoo! Their lives are so tough in this upper middle class world where everyone loves them, but won’t go deeper!
Margo saw a dead body as a kid, so maybe that screwed her up. She still sucks. She runs away and when she’s eventually found, she gives this speech about people loving the “idea” of her. Get bent, you wannabe rebel. There’s a line from Quentin where he mocks her parents for being bad, but my feeling is it’s not their fault. Sometimes your kid sucks. What can you do? I’ve got no pity for Margo.
Lacey is somehow even worse. She goes to a party at her ex-boyfriend’s house, then sobs in an empty bathtub and wonders why no one takes her seriously. She’s beautiful, going to an Ivy League school in the fall and she thinks her life sucks. She tags along on a road trip, then bitches about how Margo was a bad friend and she wants to go home. Get lost, Lacey.
But, this is your standard teen male fantasy movie about nerds getting the popular girls, so here we are.
ROAD TRIP! … … EVENTUALLY!
When I watched this, I thought this was going to be a road trip movie where these kids search for a girl that disappeared. Feelings would be shared, bonds would be discussed and virginities would be lost. And after about 70 minutes of movie, it was.
OK, teen millennials and millennial teens, time for your pal Uncle Dave to tell you about teen movies from 30 years ago. They were about something. Ferris Bueller was about skipping school and stealing a Ferrari and hanging out in Chicago. The Breakfast Club was about teens from wildly different backgrounds learning they weren’t so different after all. Sixteen Candles was about… a cake with 16 candles on it? I don’t remember. Molly Ringwald raced Jon Cusack down a ski slope? I was barely alive then.
I’m making two points, that teen movies with a true core and direction are usually very good and resonate forever and John Hughes was tremendous at what he did. John Green is not. Juno is less than a decade old and it feels like a teen movie from 50 years ago.
The first hour of this movie is Quentin finding crumbs that Margo left behind that would absolutely never be found. Ever. You can put the entire team from Criminal Minds in that abandoned warehouse and they are not putting that map thing together. And at the very least, it should have dawned on Quentin that Margo clearly did not want to be found, but when you’re a deranged male stalker, you’re not thinking with your brain.
But to the movie’s credit, the trail Margo leaves is so absurd that you almost have to take an hour to put it all together. If they could’ve just skipped from Margo going missing to the gang in the minivan, they could’ve had something here.
At least this movie lacked Elgort.
ELGORT!
Elgort!
THE INSANE ROMANTIC SUBPLOT
It’s possible the character of Ben is mentally slow. I don’t meant that as a joke. He talks and says things that make me wonder if he’s slow in the book. He tries to talk like Eminem. He lies about sexual conquests in Canada. He’s not entirely unlikable but he’s definitely not having sex in high school.
When Lacey and Ben first meet, he touches her weirdly on the arm. Later, at a party, he abandons a conversation with her to vomit into a pot. On the road trip, he pees into two cans, then has the pee splash on his face. All the while, I don’t think he ever brushed his teeth or showered after vomiting.
So, of course, Lacey falls for him and asks him to prom.
There are two or three moments where Ben is doing something normal and the camera catches Lacey smiling because of it. I’m pretty sure the writers realized there was no way Ben could win her over with words or direct actions, so they had her heart stolen by Ben ripping his t-shirt to wrap Quentin’s bleeding head.
After Ben does something that isn’t completely stupid, she gives looks like this:
This is the type of thing that would be mocked in Not Another Teen Movie 2. Side note: Can someone please make Not Another Teen Movie 2?
So the message here for high school nerds is land your dream girl but spraying piss on yourself and doing one nice thing for a friend in front of that girl.
MARGO’S CRIMES, RANKED
The first 10-15 minutes of the movie are Margo doing crimes with Quentin as an accomplice. Some of her actions are justified but others are the acts of someone destined for prison in her 20s. This part of the movie is genuinely delightful.
1. Naked Photo/The Club — She nails her cheating boyfriend by having Quentin take a nude photo of him as he’s running away. There’s no way that picture would be in focus, but I’ll suspend disbelief on that before I will on Ben/Lacey. Margo also sticks The Club, which I didn’t not know still existed, on his the guy’s steering wheel.
2. Saran Wrap — Inspired, although she did it to Lacey, who claimed to not know of the cheating. Either she did know and she sucks, or Margo screwed up and she sucks. Spoiler: They both suck.
3. Eyebrow Nair — Removing someone’s eyebrow because they told girls not to dance with you in sixth grade is mildly psychotic if that bothers you six years later.
4. Closet Fish — Totally stolen from Grumpy Old Men. Think of your own pranks, Margo!
5. Sneaking Into The Sun Life Building — The act isn’t a crime, but the weird product placement and Fight Club ripoff upset me.
THE ENDING (PART 1)
This is the only portion of the movie that made me truly mad. The rest was benign. I guess that’s good, because you don’t want to read an old man’s lengthy review that ends with, “This is fine.” The last 15 minutes enraged me.
Quentin eventually finds Margo in a paper town (which is a cool concept and idea that I knew nothing about before this) and now he can tell her he loves her. The entire movie has been building to this. Nearly a decade of feelings and 24 hours worth of driving will culminate in the movie’s signature moment.
“I’m in love with you.”
“I don’t even know who I am.”
“K yeah sure I guess that’s a good point anyway see ya.”
So that’s not a direct quote, but that’s basically what happens. It’s so strange! They have a milkshake where she’s like, “You just love the idea of me!” and he just goes along with it. I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman, but wouldn’t it be great if some unrelenting loser like Quentin was all over you and you could make it stop by saying, “You’re just in love with the idea of me.”
Margo shuts him down hard. Then he makes out with her.
Yes. Despite her clearly not wanting anything to do with him their entire lives, what with the nine years of no talking despite living 50 feet from each other and the running away without telling him where she was going, she’s letting him roll his tongue around in her mouth because… honestly, I don’t know. This kid has had zero confidence the entire film and suddenly, at rock bottom, he’s initiating public makeouts 40 minutes after being rebuffed.
Then she asks him to stay with her. And he says no! He says no!
I mean, I get it. Quentin is a dangerous heterosexual male that won’t take no for an answer but he’s not an idiot. He wants to go home and pound fists with his dogs about his bus stop makeout sesh. But that’s basically it. He gets on a very convenient bus that’s getting him home from Pennsylvania to Florida in record time, and that’s it.
THE ENDING (PART 2)
This movie is about 90 percent narration from Quentin and that’s how it ends, with this dork waxing philosophical over a girl he was crying over a day ago. Now he’s rolling into prom like he’s in a Wes Anderson movie and driving through his stupid Orlando neighborhood while talking about how he never tries to find Margo again, which, yeah, sure, OK, man. I believe that based on everything I’ve learned about you from now.
As I said, Margo is dead five years after this ends. She likely died of a drug overdose as she attempted to recapture the high she got from stealing and running away as a kid. Or Quentin killed her. Listen to all the crap he says before the credits roll. It’s all lies he told the police when they came to his door to question him.
“I heard someone say she was in the resurrection of a play on Broadway. I heard another person say she was giving surfing lessons off the coast of the Bahamas. But I stopped listening to those stories. Because whatever Margo is doing, wherever she is now, I’m sure it’s something special. But hey, that’s her story to tell.”
The next line should be Lenny Briscoe saying, “She can’t tell that story, pal. She’s dead. You’re telling me you obsessed over this girl for nine years, tracked her down across six states when she tried to disappear, then you just stopped caring about her? It’s 2016. If you heard she was on Broadway, why not Google it? You didn’t look for her Facebook page? Her Instagram? Is she the only woman in her 20s that’s not on Snapchat? Let’s talk about this downtown.”
Lenny would break him inside of 10 minutes and we’d have a satisfying ending to this demented teen love story.
TWO RANDOM NOTES FROM MY PAD
• The Pokemon scene was when I realized I made the right choice for a millennial divide story. Oh, yeah, Lacey likes Pokemon and so does Ben. That’s another thing that made her want him. Christ.
• When Quentin gets home, does he tell Margo’s family where she is? I mean, he must, right? I know they probably don’t care, but this girl is seriously messed up and if he really cared about her, he’d plead with her parents to call her, wouldn’t he? Or maybe he’d rush home to go to prom and hug his boys and start setting up his alibi. Yeah, that’s definitely what he did.
