Paper Towns

A quiet teenager (Nat Wolff) leads his friends (Austin Abrams, Justice Smith, Halston Sage, Jaz Sinclair) on a cross-country quest to find his runaway, free-spirited neighbor (Cara Delevingne). Adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from John Green's book, and directed by Jake Schreier with studied limpness, this is the kind of movie that makes you long for a time machine so you can go back and stop J.D. Salinger from writing The Catcher in the Rye, bulging with fatuous teen-angst questions like “Who am I?” and “Who am I gonna take to the prom?” Wolff and Delevingne are monotonal and charisma-challenged, with no screen chemistry, and that doesn't help. In the whole cast, only Halston Sage (as Delevigne's former best friend) makes much of an impression; this kid may actually be going places. J.L.