The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 125 minutes
Directed by: Josh Boone
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Mike Birbiglia, Lotte Verbeek, Willem Dafoe
KRS release

The Fault in Our Stars is an adaptation of the hit 2012 young adult novel of the same name by John Green. The author’s inspiration for this book was the death of a 16-year-old girl with whom he was friends, the birth of his first child while writing the book and the time he worked as a student’s chaplain at a children’s hospital.

The book dominated the New York Times bestselling list for seven weeks and printing has now run into a million copies. 20th Century Fox has entrusted this adaptation into the hands of Josh Boone, making this his follow-up feature for 2012’s Stuck in Love.

The film has character, style and, most important of all, a sense of real empathy and substance

The result is a very unusual romantic drama that will please the book’s fans and also a general audience. It has become one of this year’s box-office hits and Hollywood sensations.

Shailene Woodley plays 17-year-old Hazel, who has cancer and is already resigned to death. After taking a new medicine, her condition becomes stable but with her lungs weak she needs to have oxygen support on a constant basis. At the urging of her worried parents (Sam Trammell and Laura Dern), she joins a support group.

There she meets other teenagers including Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), who is 18 years old, has had part of his leg amputated due to cancer but has a positive outlook on life. Then there is Isaac (Nat Wolff), who has been scarred by the sickness and there is a high chance his body will be damaged further.

Augustus is soon infatuated with Hazel and wants to help her change her outlook on life. Soon a friendship bond develops but she does not want the relationship to blossom into something else as she believes her time is too limited to permit herself the luxury of such a relationship.

The two do agree to go to Amsterdam where they want to visit Peter van Houten (Willem Dafoe), an author whose novel stops abruptly and mysteriously and is Hazel’s favourite book. Along the way the two learn more about themselves, each other and what to make of life.

Propelled forward by an alternative soundtrack that features the likes of Birdy and Ed Sheeran, The Fault in Our Stars succeeds on many points. First of all, usually I have a natural aversion to tearjerker movies. The difference with this picture is that this is a feel-good tearjerker movie if ever there was one. You will laugh and you will cry and you will feel all the better for it.

The picture’s characters, the essence of the story and what happens on screen makes this a movie with a mission. Boone knows how to manipulate his audience but the film has character, style and, most important of all, a sense of real empathy and substance.

An advantage the film enjoys is tangible chemistry between Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. They are the core of the film and present the audience with a sense of fuzzy, warm feelings that makes one feel for the characters and their relationship. The interesting factor here is that these play two normal teenagers, not rebels, not runaways, not mutants, not anything special, just the fact they are sick and in love. The relationships the teens have with their parents also ring true.

Another important factor in this film is the dialogue which gives the characters their sense of being and an anchor to the real world. It’s a film I am sure will have many in the audience tugging at their tissues. It also highlights what it means to lose a loved one but, even more, what it means to have actually loved.