
There are nine problems...
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a modern archetype defined by Nathan Rabin in his review of Elizabethtown (2005) as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." The term is a complaint or criticism rather than something beloved. These characters are walking infatuations that belong to the observers and not to the actors themselves. And Paper Towns (2015), an adaptation of the novel by John Green (of The Fault in Our Stars fame), adheres to that definition with ironic precision before crushing that simplicity and then resuscitating it a little so we aren't too much the better for the experience.