The Fault in Our Stars, which is based on the bestselling young-adult novel by John Green, is about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love and it’s a sort of Love Story for younger people, God help them, although unlike Love Story it’s not set to mislead an entire generation. (In my experience, love means having to say you’re sorry constantly, and at least three times before breakfast.) This is funnier — it’s funny about the Big C; that’s its USP — but it is still a weepie and yes, I did weep, as I’m not a cold-hearted monster (am I not still recovering from Marley & Me?), but the final quarter of the film goes in so manipulatively hard that, by what seemed like the fourth eulogy I’d rather had it and instead of paying attention was doing a food shop in my head, and thinking: ‘Tinned tomatoes’. Also: ‘Cheese’. Not ideal — I attempted a list in the dark, which was all over the place — but there you are.
Our heroine is Hazel Grace Lancaster, as played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants; Divergent), who is beautiful without being Hollywood beautiful, has wonderfully expressive eyes, and who delivers such a lovely, layered performance that, when this film works, it works because of her. Hazel is not in a great place. Hazel is 16 and has thyroid cancer, which forces her to wear tubes in her nose and drag around an oxygen tank. Not a great place, not a great look, but she is remarkably sanguine, and worries more about others, particularly her lovely mother (Laura Dern), whom I was also most worried about. (Terrible sign of age; identifying with mothers.) Having cancer sucks, and attending a support group for teens with cancer sucks, but Hazel attends the group to make her mother happy. (Nice girl, Hazel.) Here, she meets Augustus ‘Gus’ Waters, as played by Ansel Elgort, who looks the spit of one of the actors in Alias Smith and Jones. Not Pete Duel. The other one. The one no one fancied as much. Ben Murphy. (This is how old I am.) Gus is in remission since his cancer necessitated one of his legs being removed from the knee down. This sounds about as fun as knowing you have to pick up tinned tomatoes (and cheese) on the way home, but these teenagers are ‘sassy’ — I think that’s the word — and mocking and never self-pitying and there are some good lines. This is Hazel on protecting her mother: ‘There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer at 16, and that’s having a kid biting it from cancer.’ True, probably.
Gus and Hazel grow close and she tells him about her literary obsession, a book called An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten, who lives in Holland. We don’t know what is in the book exactly, except it’s cancer-themed, says ‘pain demands to be felt’ and it ends mid-sentence, as life does (presumably). Gus uses his wish from one of those wish foundations to take Hazel to Amsterdam to visit Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), who turns out to be a misanthropic alcoholic, so they beat it to Anne Frank’s house, and appropriate Anne Frank in a way which may not make you feel entirely comfortable. If this is in the book, then I would like to say to John Green: ‘No, Sir. A tragedy and an atrocity are not the same thing at all.’ There is also sex and a twist; a twist so manipulative that it’s at this point you may begin the process of drying your eyes and mentally checking out.
As directed by Josh Boone, this offers warmth and humour and the extremely fine Ms Woodley — Elgort said everything with a smirk, for some reason, which became annoying — and one has, I think, to applaud any teen film that takes on a tricky subject and expects its audience to care about something other than superheroes or vampires. But, ultimately, it paints itself into a contrived, cliché-ridden corner and, to get out of that, paints itself into yet another contrived, cliché-ridden corner, until it runs out of corners and becomes the formulaic, sentimental cancer movie you hoped it wouldn’t. Hazel to her mother: ‘You’re worried that when I die you’ll stop being a mother.’ Mother to Hazel: ‘I WILL ALWAYS BE YOUR MOTHER!’ So I stopped paying attention and made my list instead. One other thing Love Story never told us: Love means always having to keep the fridge stocked, or you are so going to get it in the neck.
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