The Fault in Our Stars *** (2014, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort) – Movie Review

American teen Hazel (Shailene Woodley) meets Gus (Ansel Elgort) at a cancer patients’ support group at a local church. Hazel, who has terminal thyroid cancer that has metastasized to her lungs, has been sent to the church by her kind-hearted mom to make friends. Gus has osteosarcoma, which is luckily in remission but has led to the amputation of his leg.

Hazel and Gus bond immediately because they’re birds of a feather. They’re both offbeat in their views and personalities, and very intelligent, witty and sarcastic too, as they fall in love and try to handle their impending deaths. Their good humour and courage are not in doubt as Hazel drags around an oxygen tank and Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, while trying to support his buddy Isaac (Nat Wolff), who loses his two eyes and his girlfriend.

Hazel has a favourite book called An Imperial Affliction about a cancer-stricken girl named Anna. She foists it on Gus, and the duo defy Hazel’s doctor to make a trip to Amsterdam to meet the novel’s obnoxious American writer (Willem Dafoe), long lost to alcohol and self-pity in his real-life loss of his daughter.

He’s verbally abusive to them and Hazel rightly tells the writer to go ***k himself. She and Gus go to the Anne Frank house to get a taste of real-life suffering. [The film-makers really shouldn’t try to equate Nazi extermination with cancer like this, by the way.] Orations and funerals and tears follow, the witty banter finally having dried up.

Based on the bestseller by John Green, director Josh Boone’s film is brisk, slick and highly professional. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and there’s enough humour and heartbreak to fill several movies. If it was a supermarket product, it would be from the Finest range. Millions of young adults (the beings we used to call teens) will Everyone who likes the book will almost certainly like the movie, though it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

The acting of the leads, including Laura Dern as Hazel’s mom, is very smooth and winning. Shailene Woodley is – and looks – far too old at 22 to be playing 16, but she’s a tough, tight little fighter of an actress who handles a difficult situation like this gig with power and conviction. Too much conviction actually. She never wavers or stumbles with any line of dialogue, all of which are carefully considered, perfectly honed script-writer’s sarcastic, witty bon mots, with not too many duff lines.

Ansel Elgort is 20 playing 17, looking just right, very young, very smooth and fresh-faced, very easy on the smiley face. He may not be Woodley’s equal as an actor, just yet at least, but he’s good anyway, a perfect foil for her as the star.

There are one or two poor performances lower down the cast, the actor playing Hazel’s dad and the actress playing Dafoe’s girlfriend for instance, and one deathly bad performance by the guy playing the Amsterdam restaurant waiter. There’s no excuse for these. Dafoe’s not at his best either, but that’s because the role’s rotten.

Teenage girls will no doubt love and swoon over this three-hankie tearjerker doomed romance, but they really shouldn’t be concerning themselves with cancer and death issues at their age. They should be relishing more wholesome fun, perhaps seeking out a harmless Disney movie like Maleficent maybe or something like Divergent (also with Woodley and Elgort).

This is all too doomy and depressing, although it really tries very hard to seem life-affirming and positive, and teach good life values out of the cancer situation. Boys and blokes are unlikely to go for it, though they may well be forced to go to it by their loved one.

Fantasy romantic cancer movies aren’t really much of a help in the real world. They don’t help making sense of things and they’re really just quite upsetting for no helpful reasons. But if you really have to make one, this is the kind of one you have to make. It follows an entirely predictable course, it’s more depressing than the intended uplifting, a bit maudlin and exploitative, but it does keep moving and remain distracting for over two hours.

Filming began on August 26 2013 in Pittsburgh, doubling for the novel’s setting of Indianapolis, Indiana. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber adapt the novel. They also filmed in Amsterdam.

The Fault in Our Stars is the fifth novel by John Green, published in January 2012. The title comes from Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’ I’m still puzzled.  In 2014 Green was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Elgort played Tommy Ross in Carrie (2013) and Caleb Prior in Divergent (2014).

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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