9 Ways Paper Towns Is Basically a Modern John Hughes Movie

Let's begin with the obvious. The main characters in Paper Towns are all high school students. They're seniors in those tender weeks leading up to graduation, and a portion of the movie even takes place on school grounds. This is Hughes 101; The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (basically all of Hughes's most celebrated films) revolve around high-school-aged characters.

Q (played by Nat Wolff) is a sensitive lil' guy. He's an introverted deep thinker who is mostly quiet, except when he's around his friends. He definitely has shades of Some Kind of Wonderful 's Keith (Eric Stoltz), Sixteen Candles's Jake (Michael Schoeffling), and The Breakfast Club's Andrew.

Literal model Cara Delevingne takes the honors of playing Margo, the girl of Q's dreams. Whenever she pulls a disappearing act, rumors fly of where she could be (a circus?) and when should could return. Hughes all but invented the "perfect" girl with Weird Science's Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). Manufactured from male fantasy, Lisa is the unattainable ideal woman. Want a more down-to-earth example? See: Amanda (Lea Thompson) from Some Kind of Wonderful.

Once the sensitive boy meets "perfect" girl, unrequited love is all but guaranteed. Q is head over heels for Margo, though she doesn't seem to share the same affection. Many of Hughes's characters have their own dramatic love lives; Sam (Molly Ringwald) has the ultimate crush on Jake in Sixteen Candles, while the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall, who doesn't have a real name in that movie) is obsessed with Sam. Being a teenager is hard.

Q has a two partners in crime, Ben (Austin Abrams), and Radar (Justice Smith). They're not the most popular guys in school, but they share a love for high school band and Pokémon. Flash back to the '80s when Anthony Michael Hall is the ringleader of his dorky friends in both Weird Science and Sixteen Candles. Remember John Cusack as one of his geeky pals?

Almost all of the first act of Paper Towns takes place over the course of one night, when Margo enlists Q's help in sabotaging her ex-boyfriend and friends. It's the night of Q's life. Hughes's stories often had limited time frames of their own; The Breakfast Club takes place over the course of one day, as does Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and much of Sixteen Candles takes place over a 24-hour period.

We barely get to see Q's parents in Paper Towns, and the only time we meet Margo's folks is when they barely care to file a police report that their daughter is gone. At one point, Q (who is still in high school) calls up his parents and tells them he's gone on a road trip and will be back in two days. Adults are all but absent, as they are in a handful of Hughes's movies. Sam's parents forget her birthday in Sixteen Candles, the parents are only seen for a few seconds in The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's parents are just dummies.

After only one night of wreaking havoc with her, Q wants to track down the missing Margo, going to extreme lengths in his attempt to find her. Those types of grand gestures are commonplace in Hughes's movies, such as when Jake shows up outside of Sam's sister's wedding, and the two share their first kiss over her belated birthday cake. (Spoiler alert . . . but also it's been 31 years.)

One thing Paper Towns has in common with both The Fault in Our Stars and John Hughes movies is an epic soundtrack. Alternative and indie bands like Vampire Weekend and Grouplove have tracks on the endlessly listenable collection. Need I remind you of the Breakfast Club soundtrack? "Don't You (Forget About Me)" is an '80s anthem because of that movie, and Ferris Bueller revived "Twist and Shout" for a whole new generation.