Paper Towns ... when everything that lives there is fake

Are we have enough of this new movies based in popular YA novels? In times where super hero rule the box office, raunchy comedies are the only ones making money, and animated films are the event of the year, doesn't sound strange that a new genre came out to try to steal the main spot. YA have turned reading series into a pop culture phenomenon. Stories based in coming to age adventures for teenagers or they saving the world in a dystopian future have pleased the young ones were written to as the older that feel related to their stories and still want to be part of them when growing up has turned into a on going process till the end of their lives.

So what could possibly be new and enjoyable about the new movie "Paper Towns" (2015) based on the YA novel by John Green? Remarking that this happens to not be one of his most popular ones yet one of his best reviewed ones. To start we have to say that there's a lot but at the end still nothing great under it's skin. To be more specific let's say that the movie can be divided in three different acts or short films. The first one is the teenage dream, where we get to meet the main characters, a young boy named Q and his neighbor Margo, an adventurous girl that doesn't settle with an ordinary life and likes mysteries turning herself in to the biggest one, while playing the role of the popular chick of high school, the one everybody talks about. So been Q's childhood crush and now about to finish high school, time is running and as he is a shy, not adventurous, very simple guy, he just hopes for the opportunity to get a chance to get her back.

So when one night she appears into his room and propose to join her in a revenge quest against her best friends and ex boyfriend, he all scared say yes just to get the chance to spend time with her. Here everybody fees nauseas with all the possible cliches at this point the story shows. Every joke, romantic momentum, conversation evoques into something we have seen before yet we love about this movies, feels so safe that we can't but root for this two to fall in love and have their happy ending even when we can see it miles away. So the most interesting part of this gets almost at the end of this act, when we get to see the clash of this two very different persons and why the work together so well as one helps the other to fit their needs. He has goals, plans, values, traditions, so simple that is boring but he is just as anyone, he is following the path that everybody made for him, and in her words he looks cute when he's confident but less when he's not. On the other side, she is looking for more, she can't deal with the fact of people looking at her in just one way, she refuses to please them and wants more, something that feels more real, no fake as those ideas everybody is selling to buy a confortable predictable life.

So we jump to the second act, the mystery one, when Margo has disappeared leaving no one but just a few people, including Q to wonder her abouts. He can sleep and stop thinking what could possible went wrong after an amazing night together, is like she left him after the wedding. So in his mind he buys the idea that she left some clues for him to find him, all this with the encourage and support of his two best friends, the real couple that steal the show, two guys so different but so nice and funny that had made Q's life bearable. Radar is a total geek, ashamed of the crazy connection with his friends and family that keeps his girlfriend on the dark about them and B is a wanna be jock that only thinks about girls and sex and video games, and get drunk. The three complement each other. So this quest of lies turns into their new adventure, specially now that after graduation will have to take different paths with no better way that spend their last weeks together.

While searching for this clues, we get to see the real core of this movie, this might not be a romantic comedy but a movie about friendship and how have a crush, which at that age means everything, almost like love for grown ups, and friendships help everyone to grow up, to get out of that shell and experience all what you ever dreamed of. sometimes we need a push to realize that all what is stopping us to truly be ourselves is...in our mind. Get drunk, skip classes, have sex, drive away, destroy things, is al about experience new things, things that everybody talk about we need to try in order to understand them and find they place in our lives, things that will define us as we really are and not following what everybody expect from us, and that would be the real truth about growing up, is being a rabel, a misunderstood, seem stupid, act like a smart ass, just cause we need to, we are a mystery that needs to be solved.

So as life is, we get to the third act, the road trip, that journey that will lead us to that goal, the promise land, become an adult, defining ourselves and embrace what we want, like and are. As so, our three amigos, figured where could possibly be Margo and embrace the adventure of driving there and get back before graduation, plus getting two new additions, the girlfriend and Margo's best friend which seems been the other one concern about her and happens to be B's crush as she happens to be sexy and beautiful, what the odds! So as any conclusion we get to the best part, the momentum has been building up and it's time to take a risk. They travel from Florida to New York state, to one of the most popular paper towns nationwide. This five young adults with a different and unique dream and interest but getting together to support their friend and share a common goal. A metaphor that can't be more familiar.

Once they reach their destiny, would be a spoiler to spill the beans and feel what happens but the fact that things turned as they should be is more than satisfying and without saying exactly what this means, we realize that being a mystery means that we have no idea of what we want and what's the plan we want for us and sometimes the one we been holding to is not the right one, but the one that has been in front of our eyes and haven't noticed yet. That's like a splash of cold water that every kid needs to experience and us, the old ones, remember as a pin point in our lives. Because that's what life means, love, enjoy, have fun, be sad, while meeting interesting people that will lead us through this path, just to call them our friends, and jump to the other and get a new lesson, a new experience in order to keep growing up, becoming a better version of ourselves. Sometimes we need to get lost to be found and this might sound cliche but as the movie at the end things turn out to be very different from what we though and expect at the beginning.