Unremarkable teens panic over non-problems in Paper Towns, a flatlined adaptation of a John Green YA novel that makes The Fault In Our Stars look like an Abbas Kiarostami masterpiece. Good teen movies are about recognition, assuring awkward adolescents that the freak-outs and crushing disappointments that define their pained existences are actually totally normal and quite surmountable. But the key to making this game plan work is the same key to making all character-driven stories work: good characters. Paper Towns has none of those.

It’s nice that portraying normal-looking teens on-screen has become so fashionable as of late (the days of 35-year-old models playing high-schoolers are all but a distant memory), but for goodness’ sake, just because they look ordinary doesn’t mean they have to be the dullest kids on the block. Our proxy and narrator is Q (Nat Wolff), a well-behaved, unassuming high school senior living in suburban Orlando. He’s the kind of kid who TPs a house for the first time and considers it the wildest night of his life.

Since Q was a kid, he’s been under the spell of Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne), the girl from across the street (his crush is his sole defining personality trait). They were friends in elementary school, but have grown apart as Q’s mild-mannered, obedient nature has caused the adventurous, rebellious Margo to leave him in the proverbial dust; she leads a nocturnal, untamed life while Q gets straight-As and hangs out with his buddies in the school band room. Seemingly out of the blue, Margo finally takes notice of him for the first time since they were kids and invites him out for a late-night revenge mission against her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend. Thinking it may be his last chance to spend time with the girl of his dreams before he goes off to college, he lets go of his inhibitions, holds his breath and takes the dive.

It’s the best night of Q’s life, but he’s jerked back to reality when Margo mysteriously vanishes, leaving a trail of crafty clues in her wake. From highlighted passages in poetry books to tiny notes hidden in the easiest-to-miss places, Q obsesses over Margo’s breadcrumbs, determined to rescue her from wherever she’s run off to (her parents aren’t as concerned; she’s been known to run off for weeks at a time). Once he deciphers the clues and figures out where she’s gone, he gathers four of his equally uninteresting friends and saddles up for a road trip to find his lost love.

The plot is so unoriginal and uninspiring that I was actually aggravated watching it. The worst thing about Paper Towns isn’t that it’s poorly made or majorly flawed; it’s that it’s so humble and plain and unexciting that it saps the life out of you. It even sucks the life out of its talents. Director Jake Schreier made a charming, inventive movie in 2012 called Robot & Frank that had me excited about his forthcoming work. Alas, Paper Towns seems to only have Green’s fingerprints on it, and none of his. Wolff was a standout in Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto as a bratty, sexually abusive teen with a mean streak (he was good in The Fault In Our Stars, too), but in this movie he’s virtually impossible to pick out of a lineup of other teenage male leads.

Some scenes in Paper Towns are so uncomfortably contrived and cheesy that I scanned the theater for a moment, positive someone would get up and leave out of impatience and disgust (I had the urge myself). When Margo’s clues lead Q and company to a spooky, abandoned convenience store in the middle of the night, they start singing a song to ease their fears. They start singing the Pokémon theme song. This scene isn’t painful because of how nerdy it is (I actually quite enjoy the Pokémon video games, thank you very much), but because it’s disingenuously presented as some kind of classic coming-of-age movie moment. Simply put, it’s not funny and it’s a waste of time.

When you boil Paper Towns down, it’s about a boy who learns to let go of lofty idealizations and appreciate what he’s got right under his nose. It’s actually not a bad life lesson to base a movie on, but the movie Schreier’s built around it is so unambitious that it’s hard to absorb the message, considering the mind-numbingly boring the road to get there is. Like its hero, Paper Towns needs to grow some balls.

We may seem like reclusive budget-shirking obscure film enthusiasts over here at Way Too Indie, and well, some of us are, but we’re not living in any dark holes and far be it from of us to say that a film that had a little money behind it isn’t worth our notice. So here we are, covering our bases. In The Mainstream we’ll look at what’s doing well at the box-office (and secretly hoping it’s an indie darling) and all those major releases that demand our attention in the name of pop culture.

With its unfortunate calendaring (yeah, we’re missing last year’s 4-day weekend too), this year’s 4th of July weekend  has been pretty lackluster for our friends at the studios and brought in the lowest box-office numbers in a decade. (We have a feeling they’ll end up on their feet.)

June Recap

June was filled with lots of fun in the not-so-lazy river of the mainstream. Franchises continue their summer dominance. Obviously there was that one film, about robot cars from space, um, or something like that. There was 22 Jump Street where our undercover cops graduated to college and took home the box-office for the month so clearly it’s got enough laughs to draw the crowds. We get further instruction on flying monsters with How to Train Your Dragon 2, a definite example of sequels done right. Also, a cowboy made a musical, but it wasn’t great. Personally, we thought the shmoopy YA movie The Fault in Our Stars with its clever dialogue and straightforward romance was better than all that CG fare. But if you are going to CG it up (and haven’t yet indulged) we can’t push Snowpiercer on you enough. It’s the June release most worth rooting for — both CJ and Ananda loved it.

Snowpiercer

July Preview

Now we’re in the thick of it and the previously released studio behemoths will battle it out for the rest of the summer to see who can suck in the most cash. June cash cows will likely continue to dominate, but July has a few mainstream films that look enticing including Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which may take the rebooted series to new levels, or just creep us out with heavily animated gorillas trying to get us to care. Otherwise,  we already love her as Black Widow so we know Scarlett Johansson can kick ass, and after mesmerizing us in Under the Skin we are excited to see her be a high functioning super-human in Lucy. Below is the release schedule for July, including limited releases, so don’t forget to mix in a few indies with your blockbusters for a well-rounded summer movie diet.

The Week of July 4

Life Itself, Earth To Echo, My America, Tammy, Behaving Badly, Beyond The Edge, A Brony Tale, Deliver Us From Evil, Gabrielle, Me And You, Nothing Bad Can Happen, Premature, School Dance

The Week of July 11

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, Affluenza, Boyhood, Land Ho!, Rage, And So It Goes, Closed Curtain, A Long Way Down, Made In America

The Week of July 18

Sex Tape, I Origins, Mood Indigo, Planes: Fire & Rescue, The Purge: Anarchy, Video Games: The Movie, Wish I Was Here, Aftermath, Among Ravens

The Week of July 25

Magic In The Moonlight, The Congress, Happy Christmas, Hercules, The Kill Team, Lucy, A Master Builder, A Most Wanted Man, Very Good Girls, Beneath, The Fluffy Movie, Ironclad: Battle For Blood, My Man Is A Loser, Step Up: All In

June Box Office Domestic Grosses

1. 22 Jump Street (Sony) — $146,974,343
2. How to Train Your Dragon 2 (Fox) — $128,810,252
3. Transformers: Age of Extinction (Paramount) — $128,685,351
4. The Fault in our Stars (Fox) — $112,635,75
5. Edge of Tomorrow (WB) — $86,414,785

2014 Year-To-Date Box Office Domestic Grosses

1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (BV) — $257,225,897
2. The LEGO Movie (WB) — $257,092,045
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past (Fox) — $224,809,730
4. Maleficent (BV) — $206,231,009
5. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Sony) — $200,376,363

Based on the wildly popular John Greene novel, The Fault in Our Stars, directed by Josh Boone, has a can’t-fail combination of gifted, pretty, rising young stars and an invincibly sympathetic, sob-inducing story of big dreams and heartache that will, without a doubt, draw piles and piles of money into the laps of all involved in the production. Many a skeptic cinephile will find themselves approaching the film with folded arms, expecting a manipulative tearjerker expertly designed to appeal to the teen idol masses. The film is, in fact, every bit a product of the Hollywood cheese factory, but it offers much more than that; it’s bravely earnest, self-aware, crafted with care, and undeniably life-affirming.

“Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” It’s biting remarks like these, spoken by Shailene Woodley as plucky 16-year-old cancer patient Hazel Grace, that elevate the film high above manufactured YA mediocrity. Hazel’s lived with metastatic thyroid cancer (which mostly affects her lungs) for the larger part of her life, dragging around an oxygen tank with a tube fed to her nose at all times. She refuses to pity herself, a quality so endearing it isn’t fair. She’s mostly concerned with how her imminent fate will affect her sweet parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell) than she is afraid of leaving this world. At once cynical and compassionate, witty and self-deprecating, Hazel Grace is irresistible.

Hazel acquires a persistent admirer at a cancer support group named Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a brazen, unstoppably confident young man who pops cigarettes in his mouth but never lights them. Augustus (Gus for short), though in remission, lost a leg to disease, so he keeps the thing that could kill him hanging from his lips, but never gives it the power to do its dirty work. “A metaphor,” he proudly calls the strange habit through an impish grin. Yes, Gus should be incredibly annoying, but he’s not. This is because Elgort, like Woodley, is so charismatic you’ll pretty much buy whatever he’s selling, including an unlit cigarette.

A problem with most young actors is that they tend to be given dialogue that their intellect isn’t mature enough to support. They say all these smart, insightful things, but you can see on their face that they frankly don’t fully understand the weight of what they’re talking about. Woodley and Elgort are gifted in that they exude intelligence, thoughtfulness, and savvy, making smart dialogue sound smart, the corniest lines sound terribly romantic and natural.

Shortly after they meet at the support group, Hazel asks Gus why he’s staring at her. He answers: “Because you’re beautiful.” Typing that made me cringe. But watching the scene unfold, you see the utter conviction and sincerity in Elgort’s eyes, Woodley lets out a small, nervous laugh, and amazingly…you smile. They’ve got you, those damn kids. Then, as Gus turns to say goodbye to another girl from the group, Woodley almost inaudibly mutters, “…I’m not beautiful.” Perfect timing. The heart melts.

For a while, Hazel and Gus swirl around each other in a whirlwind teen fantasy, flirting, texting, and charming each other to pieces. When Hazel is invited to Amsterdam by Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), her favorite author, she’s overwhelmed with excitement, but her dream escapes her when her mom, full of regret, breaks the news that they simply don’t have enough money to make the trip. Dern is absolutely wonderful, filling every frame she occupies with love and acceptance. Hazel’s dream is saved by Gus, who uses his last wish (granted by the Genie wish foundation) to fly them to Amsterdam where they indeed meet the famed author. The interaction is an unexpectedly intense watershed moment, with the young actors playing beautifully off of the seasoned Dafoe.

Woodley’s role is a colorful one, covering a wide spectrum of emotions, and she wears every iota of them on her face. She can make you laugh with a simple raised eyebrow, or make you sob with a subtle quiver of the lip. Her talent is beyond her years, which is fitting, as Hazel is forced to face more trauma before her 18th year than most people do in a lifetime. The physical torment endured by Hazel due to her condition are conveyed excellently, and the danger of her lungs failing is always lingering in the back of your mind, defining the stakes.

Elgort is suave and super-cool as you’d expect, but his looks are pleasantly pedestrian; he’s handsome no doubt, but he also looks like your everyday teen with his puffy Nikes and thrift store leather jackets. When he leans in and says, “I’m in love with you, Hazel Grace,” he doesn’t blink, doesn’t shake. He means what he says, and we feel it.

The film is less about the sadness of cancer than it is about the wry skepticism and wild energy of teenagers. Being a teen is a beautifully flawed experience on its own, but Hazel and Gus’ poise in the face of doom makes their story all the more inspiring and memorable. The film’s ending, while predictably tragic, doesn’t define the experience. Yes, it’s manipulative, and yes, tears will be shed by the bucketful. But what will stick with you is the strong chemistry between the young lovebirds, which is the greatest victory for any romance movie. Color me impressed.

The Fault in Our Stars trailer

In this installment, CJ, Bernard, and Dustin talk about the films we have seen recently including Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas, Cannes winner Heli, and the new Shailene Woodley film The Fault In Our Stars. We also share the Worst Films of 2014 so far and introduce a new segment called “Watch This” where we recommend each other a film to discuss. Our “Watch This” picks this episode are the highly acclaimed coming-of-age punk film We Are The Best! and Neil LaBute’s slow-burner Some Velvet Morning.

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