Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
We've seen the elements that make up "Paper Towns" before, but that's OK. Schreier proves adept at avoiding cliches, and is helped by his actors.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Deeply mediocre .

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Sure, it's a movie aimed at teenagers in which an unpopular guy wants to get a popular girl, but there's a lot more to this story's map between points A and B.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Fantasy is the currency in which adolescent movies deal (why else, in teen movies, would everyone's hair always be perfect?), and "Paper Towns" putters along agreeably enough.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Unlike in its predecessor, The Fault in Our Stars, the path to pubescent enlightenment in Paper Towns is more literal than existential, giving your tear ducts the night off at the cost of something a little deeper.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
If you're searching for smart, soulful teen entertainment, you can start looking inside "Paper Towns."

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
In a summer full of superheroes, dinosaurs and earthquakes it could very easily get drowned out. But try listening a little harder. It has something to say.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A satisfying look at young unrequited love, bromances, independence and letting go.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Despite its glimmers of self-awareness, Paper Towns works neither as a teen romance nor as a subversion of the same.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Lukewarm as a romance, but the charming young cast helps compensate.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Ok, Paper Towns plays it safe, but Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne are irresistible so we're never sorry.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's the rare movie that can sacrifice the clean lines of fantasy and melodrama for the messiness of ordinary life - that neither burnishes nor condemns the up-down turmoil of the teenage soul, but rather lets it be.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Paper Towns is an exercise in artifice.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Paper Towns is particularly good at pinpointing that certain point in teenage male friendships where the guys are getting older, but they still sometimes resort to silly voices and goofy humor when the girls aren't around.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
Paper Towns is a movie that I really liked, but I probably would have loved if I'd seen it when I was 13.

Name : Michael Ordona / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Self-absorption might be a common teen trait, but its glorification here may fail to excite those old enough to know they don't know everything.

Name : Manori Ravindran / Alias : Globe and Mail
Fans expecting more than a routine coming-of-age story had better prepare for a paper movie.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
At last, a movie about teens on the cusp of adulthood that has heart, wit and soul.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Neustadter and Weber, who also adapted "A Fault in Our Stars" for director Josh Boone, have a feel for the mundane moments of teen life that carry an emotional punch.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
Even literate voiceovers (this one isn't so much) telegraph that we're in for safe if dark ironies and rueful platitudes that inevitably resolve in some glib life lesson.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The movie name-drops the cool stuff, the rebels of word and song, but the essence of the story and the cardboard characters who inhabit it are as mundane as can be.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Even if the smarmily sanctified and beautifully doomed male lead of The Fault in Our Stars made you want to run screaming from the theater, you may find yourself on board with this movie's road trip.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
A serenely bland adaptation of the John Green young-adult novel about a regular boy in love with the mystery girl next door.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is sensitive and often winning in its depiction of adolescent behavior; the characters speak openly about their vulnerabilities, which makes them sympathetic.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
In its considered, neatly packaged way, the film occupies a safe and solid middle-class middle ground in teen storyland, between crass gross-out comedies and mawkish romance on one side and edgy, exploratory indie fare on the other.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
It may not subvert every cliche of the high-school romance genre, but director Jake Schreier's coming-of-age dramedy nonetheless pulses with moving and melancholy moments .

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
A diverting romp that will get the job done for the author's "nerdfighter" fans.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
An acclaimed film director, a legendary comic actor, lots of fun rock and pop songs, and a noble story at its core can't save "Rock the Kasbah" from being one hugely misguided dud.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
A white-savior showbiz fable of a particularly dubious and retrograde variety.

Name : Natalie Daher / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It fumbles a bit by prioritizing the goofy antics of its white cast over what turns out to be a smart depiction of non-Western life.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
A comedy that's openly afraid to seem too sincere or too mawkish, and doesn't fully commit either to its comedy or its uplift. Like Murray, it's wry and presented largely in air quotes, with an accompanying eye-roll.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Not Murray's best and not Levinson's either.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Murray does his best to hold up the movie, but there's only so much he can do. Ultimately, his latest fish out of water never makes it back upstream.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Rock the Kasbah, does not rock at all - not even a little bit.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Rock the Kasbah" is the mausoleum where comedy was buried.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Murray, idiosyncratic as always, dominates, but his performance can't save this misconceived mess.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Rock the Kasbah's timing is so slack, and its screenplay so shapeless, that the movie doesn't even rise to the level of an Afghan-war Stripes. It's almost as laugh-free as the latest news from Kunduz.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Your enjoyment of all this will probably depend heavily on your willingness to let the words romp and Taliban coexist for approximately two hours.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Levinson never seems to know what to point his camera at, or when to cut, and Glazer never seems to know when to leave a joke alone and let the cast work.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
There might be a decent movie in here somewhere, if the focus had been on the right character.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Quite possibly [Murray's] worst movie ever.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This movie is all over the place.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Rock the Kasbah morphs into a pretty implausible feel-good movie that's nearly as maudlin as it is unconvincing.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
As one-liner after one-liner misses its mark, you begin to feel sorry for Murray, who's really too old to be playing a guy who has a little daughter . and likes to get kinky with Kate Hudson as a raucous, Dolly Parton-style hooker-businesswoman.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A lot of the actor's usual mercurial charm isn't used to full effect and is actually tempered when it doesn't feel like it should be.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
For every moment of desert beauty, or insight into the twilight economies that flourish in a war zone, there's a key scene that appears truncated or even missing.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An ongoing war is no setting for a musical comedy, especially one this glib and inane.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This dismal comedy, scripted by Murray's old pal Mitch Glazer (Scrooged), evinces only enough interest in Afghanis to keep the story rolling.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's a movie that's half-over before it tells us what it's really about.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Cliched, enervating, insulting - it's tough to settle on a single pejorative for "Rock the Kasbah," though abysmal might do.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : TIME Magazine
Its music-industry gags sit awkwardly next to war-zone jokes and cultural quips, landing all involved on a peace train to nowhere.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
If it were any worse, they'd be screening it as evidence at The Hague.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Bill Murray heads to Afghanistan in director Barry Levinson's dreadfully misguided farce.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Rock the Kasbah goes fierce to quietly touching and back to funny again.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Bill Murray is Bill Murray is Bill Murray in a comedy that's little more than a schtick delivery system with some third-act personal growth thrown in for good measure.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
The movie wants to be both glib and emotionally resonant, but it can't seem to figure out what the stakes are - even as people are getting shot.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It needs a smarter script. It needs at least two or three perfectly engineered, joke-after-joke sequences. It needs a smart director - did you really do "Wag the Dog," Levinson? - whose idea of political satire goes beyond freshman-year sarcasm.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Some projects are just too misguided for the star to mug and shrug his way out of. Consider Rock the Kasbah at the top, or the bottom, of that list.