The Fault In Our Stars (12A.)
Directed by Josh Boone.
Starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat Woolf, Sam Trammell and Willem Dafoe. 125 mins
It can sometimes seem that the only hit movies not based on comic books these days are the ones based on popular teen lit. So having enjoyed some moderate success in her New Hunger Games vehicle Divergent, Woodley is reteamed with Divergent co-star Elgort in this Teen Cancer Romance based on a bestselling book by John Green which has a fanatical following.
Woodley plays Hazel, whose cancer is terminal but protracted and requires her to trolley around an oxygen canister wherever she goes, as if she is caddying her own life. Forced to go to a teen cancer support group she bumps into one Augustus Waters (Elgort.) His cancer has deprived him of his right leg, but is now all gone, a fact which makes him insufferably smug. Despite her reluctance, they fall in love.
The promise of the movie is that this is not going to be the standard cancer film, the one that will give you the truth not the cliché, a promise that it largely fails on. It is though a wholly Aspirational Cancer drama: everybody lives in enormous homes with the best of everything. It is as if the real tragedy is that they are going to die and leave all this really neat stuff behind. In its attempt to write them as something more than victims it makes them all rather self-satisfied with their ailments. It is a relief when Willem Dafoe pops up after an hour playing a cynical author to wipe the smiles off of their faces.
In the second half, once things have taken a turn for the worse, the picture begins to get moving. Green’s novel provides the film with plenty of poignancy and some affecting dialogue. For me the two young leads never really get on top of their characters but they both seem to click with the target audience. The screening I attended had the most sniffling I’ve heard in a cinema since I stumbled into a church group outing at a matinee screening of The Passion of The Christ. A row of ladies just across from me were sniffling and balling most of the way through and as the film ended they wiped away the tears and laughed and joshed their way happily out of the cinema. The sacrifice of youth remains a crowd pleaser after all these centuries.
Directed by Josh Boone.
Starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat Woolf, Sam Trammell and Willem Dafoe. 125 mins
It can sometimes seem that the only hit movies not based on comic books these days are the ones based on popular teen lit. So having enjoyed some moderate success in her New Hunger Games vehicle Divergent, Woodley is reteamed with Divergent co-star Elgort in this Teen Cancer Romance based on a bestselling book by John Green which has a fanatical following.
Woodley plays Hazel, whose cancer is terminal but protracted and requires her to trolley around an oxygen canister wherever she goes, as if she is caddying her own life. Forced to go to a teen cancer support group she bumps into one Augustus Waters (Elgort.) His cancer has deprived him of his right leg, but is now all gone, a fact which makes him insufferably smug. Despite her reluctance, they fall in love.
The promise of the movie is that this is not going to be the standard cancer film, the one that will give you the truth not the cliché, a promise that it largely fails on. It is though a wholly Aspirational Cancer drama: everybody lives in enormous homes with the best of everything. It is as if the real tragedy is that they are going to die and leave all this really neat stuff behind. In its attempt to write them as something more than victims it makes them all rather self-satisfied with their ailments. It is a relief when Willem Dafoe pops up after an hour playing a cynical author to wipe the smiles off of their faces.
In the second half, once things have taken a turn for the worse, the picture begins to get moving. Green’s novel provides the film with plenty of poignancy and some affecting dialogue. For me the two young leads never really get on top of their characters but they both seem to click with the target audience. The screening I attended had the most sniffling I’ve heard in a cinema since I stumbled into a church group outing at a matinee screening of The Passion of The Christ. A row of ladies just across from me were sniffling and balling most of the way through and as the film ended they wiped away the tears and laughed and joshed their way happily out of the cinema. The sacrifice of youth remains a crowd pleaser after all these centuries.
