It will make you weep, but the film is earnest and emotional, not manipulative or melodramatic. Teenagers are sick with cancer and some die there is some kissing, groping, and one implied sex scene with implied nudity some cursing an alcoholic character teenagers who put cigarettes in their mouths but never smoke them and lots of emotional upheaval. If your teenager was allowed to read John Green’s novel, than they can handle the film, which is a very faithful adaptation of the original text.

How do you imagine a future with someone who doesn't have one? When is it time to let go? The answers the characters find are far from perfect, but their roughness feels real. Rather than allowing us to enjoy a good cry from a safe remove, The Fault in Our Stars makes us contemplate tough questions about how we would deal with the prospect facing Hazel and her parents. Like teenagers the world over, Hazel and Gus are death- obsessed, but they have reason to be. But instead, after a powerful scene with a not-holding-back-the-crazy Dafoe, Hazel discovers that authors are no more likely than other adults - like her relentlessly upbeat mom (Laura Dern) - to have all the answers.Īdults, of course, already know that - and most of us, for our sanity, do our best to ignore the specter of possible oblivion until it stares us in the face. This could have gone in a cutesy direction - especially when Hazel and Gus seek out the writer in a picture-perfect Amsterdam. To the extent the story has a conventional plot, it's Hazel's quest for a more affirmative ending to her book than its dying heroine's lapse into silence on the last page - which mirrors, of course, her longing for a better ending for herself. But when circumstances finally break down Gus' snarky composure, he does justice to the more ragged moments. She's an isolated near-invalid with a lot of time to read, and we can believe in her precocity, just as we can believe that she's obsessed with her favorite book to the point of demanding a proper ending from its prickly, reclusive author (Willem Dafoe).Įlgort has more trouble with his hefty mouthfuls of dialogue, and he labors under the burden of a character who's a touch too perfect to be real. Will adults cringe at Green's overarticulate dialogue? Maybe it's hard to imagine a teen (or an adult, for that matter) who discovers her beloved's flaw and says, 'There's always a hamartia.' Stuff like this reads better on the page than on the screen, but Woodley makes it work by staying low-key and never self-consciously underlining Hazel's intelligence. But, buoyed by strong performances from the two stars, Stars is still wrenchingly effective. The material could have yielded a starker, darker movie the whimsy-laden soundtrack gives certain scenes a softer, more sentimental touch than they need. (Full disclosure: I am one of those people, and I did.)ĭirected by Josh Boone (the indie Stuck in Love), the film adaptation takes the safe road of preserving Green's tone by lifting most of its dialogue straight from the novel. Now die.' It's this in-your-face approach to the subjects of illness and death that makes Stars a weepie for people who normally don't weep.

Take Hazel's early description of getting a Stage IV cancer diagnosis right after her first period: 'Like: congratulations! You're a woman. The results of this star-crossed matchup could have been unbearably treacly or twee, but Green prefers to have his characters confront their situations with brutal humor. At her cancer support group, she meets Gus (Ansel Elgort), a dreamy-looking, garrulous boy who has lost a leg to osteosarcoma, and falls for him instantly. Both book and film are narrated by Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a 16-year-old who totes an oxygen tank, nearly died at 13, and knows her days are still numbered. After all, John Green's best-selling novel is most easily described as a weepie romance for the teen market. star-crossed Woodley and Elgort play a young couple fighting time in Boone's literary adaptation.Īdults who come to The Fault in Our Stars knowing little about its source material may be expecting an unholy mashup of Love Story and Twilight.

The fault in our stars movie rating