I like everything about Paper Towns except for its premise and central romance. Yes, I know those sort of seem like dealbreakers, but the things I liked about Paper Towns marginally outweighed the things I didn't like. Marginally.

'Paper Towns' may well be the Manic Pixie Dream Girl's nadir.

The film is thankfully shorn of the sentimentality which weighed down The Fault in Our Stars.

There's a germ of an idea in Paper Towns' romanticized adolescence but that germ quickly grows into a virus. By the time the third act has rolled along, that virus has metastasized into a full-blown cinematic cancer.