"The Fault in Our Stars" (2014)

Author John Green writes funny, smart Young Adult novels about funny, smart teens asking and thinking about Big Important Questions. In his most recent and most popular book The Fault in Our Stars Green matched the urgency and immediacy that faces young adults with a set of life and death stakes to make all that earnest pondering about the meaning of existence feel all the more pressing and poignant.

Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) is a sixteen year old with terminal thyroid cancer. She was diagnosed at thirteen and miraculously has been living on borrowed time due to a trial drug. Hazel’s life consists mostly of homebound boredom and constant intakes of medication; the rare occasions that she sees the outside world are to go to the mall, where she gazes longingly at non-sick teens, and to attend a support group. 

At one of these meetings Hazel attends mostly to appease her mother (Laura Dern, great despite her minimal presence), she, by chance, encounters Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort). Gus has recovered from osteosarcoma and lost a leg as a result of his cancer. Hazel and Gus bond and relate over more than just cancer but over a shared sense of humor (this is often, unexpectedly, a very funny film) and a desire to create meaning in a life limited and likely to be shortened by illness. 

This doesn’t sound like the beginnings of a swooning, star-crossed romance. But driven by an awareness that life is short, especially given their circumstances, and heightened by the expiring days inevitably left, they fall for one another slowly but earnestly and purposefully. The romance is never oversold and is fairly grounded for all its intensity. It’s sweet and tender, and Woodley and Elgort have significant chemistry together. 

The adaptation too often awkwardly literalizes Green’s narrative and does a little too much fan service (Some of the book’s most well-trotted quotes make their way in one form or another, occasionally awkwardly). That being said, for all its shortcomings, it must be remembered that technically the film is aimed at teens and in this regard the film and its thoughtful story feels like a welcome alternative to so many other mainstream films (It also, in my opinion, works just fine for anyone who isn’t a tween or familiar with its source). 

In particular, I’m pleased to see a complex female protagonist in a mainstream film (and one that isn’t about dystopian futures). Woodley demonstrates yet again why she’s one of today’s most promising talents. Notice the micro-emotions; Woodley is capable of making small moments feel weighted with purpose and complexity (Elgort is also good but Augustus feels a little underwritten – as Kimber Myers writes, “if his lines were said by another, less talented actor, we might have rolled our eyes more than sighed, but that wasn't the case”). I also like seeing such sincere portraits of young people; smart and articulate, but believably vulnerable. They’re not archetypes or stereotypes (This isn’t a John Hughes movie, thankfully). 

The Dissolve described the film as a “feel bad” film. One of those films we watch going in aware that it will likely depress and move us, perhaps even make us cry. At face, the film might sound like just attractive people dying from disease. But it’s more than a manipulative tearjerker. This is, in part, due to Green’s book, which bucks conventions even as it often plays to them and which has a tremendous amount of sensitivity towards its subject matter. These are good people who have been dealt a bad hand and who make the most of the lives they have. 

Josh Boon’s direction and Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s script do play to the sentimentality and heart-tugging a story like this entails, but there’s also real wisdom and hard, hard-earned truths about life. The film can be overly precious and cute, but it’s also often enough bracing and uncompromising. Hazel is always recognized to be staving off the inescapable, and the film doesn’t provide easy answers or convenient outs for all the difficulties and heartbreaks it presents. Hazel is going to die (whether it’s within the two hour timespan or not), but so is, as the film notes, everyone eventually, and it’s in drawing those connections and asking those universal questions that The Fault in Our Stars never stoops to being insufferable or maudlin. It’s honest; the clear-eyed honesty of a sixteen year old, and think just how painfully earnest we all were at sixteen. 

Grade: B+