When Paper Towns, a popular novel by bestselling author and YouTube personality John Green, was announced that it was going to be made into a film, fans all around the world buzzed with excitement, and for some (including me) anxiety. It’s a stereotype that the film is never as good as the book, due to the difficulty of condensing a 300 page novel down to an hour and a half long film, and for hard-core fans of the book it can be scary to see characters you have connected with and gone through a journey with come to life on the big screen. It’s all up to the cast to portray the characters in the same vivid way we read them.

Cara Delevingne: one of the youngest, most famous supermodels of our generation, appearing in Victoria’s secret fashion shows, Burberry campaigns; known for her thick, dark eyebrows and cool-girl attitude, was the last person anyone expected to be cast as the main female character, Margo, who is portrayed in the novel as a curvy, spunky yet relatable girl. I admit, going into the movie I was skeptical about her abilities, especially since this would be her first big acting role in a major film. The rest of the cast, on the other hand, met my standards. Nat Wolff, who had already shown how great of an actor he was in the previous film adaptation of John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was perfect for the role of the lead male, Quentin. The hype for this movie was off the charts, almost more than The Fault in Our Stars, when I decided to take a chance with this movie on opening weekend.

Now, the experience you have during this movie is going to be very different depending on if you’ve read this novel or not. If you’re like some of my friends, who are die-hard John Green fans, you may end up criticizing every aspect of the plot and every piece of every character, forgetting to try to enjoy the movie as a whole. I admit, it was a little bit of a let down when the film ended very differently from the novel, and left me with a different feeling. It just seemed to me that the vibe of the movie was different from that of the book, and a lot of that had to do with the not-so-mysterious, slightly obvious way Margo was portrayed in the movie, and the lack of chemistry between Quentin and Margo. I do understand that you can’t feel as connected and personable with the characters while watching a film versus reading a novel and using your imagination, but there did seem to be something off character-wise. The important thing is that the main moments from the book we all love were left intact, and portrayed well, causing us to feel the feelings John Green wanted us to feel.

Overall, I especially recommend this film to people that haven’t read the book, because if you have less of a biased mindset when going into this film, you will enjoy its fast-paced, adventurous plot and quick-witted, hilarious characters, especially the chemistry between Nat Wolff, Austin Abrams, and Justice Smith, who play the trio of misfit friends. In the end this quirky and thoughtful story was brought to life well considering the circumstances, and will leave you with a new, philosophical perspective on life and people/human relationships. But also know to take caution if you love this book, and don’t want the story altered by Hollywood, making you view the story in a different, less-personable perspective.