Another great performance by Shailene Woodley, a sweet romance, and some genuinely moving moments can’t quite save the cancer drama The Fault in Our Stars from feeling too sentimental for its own good.
When cancer happens in real life, it is a shocking struggle. Cancer can upset families, wreck one’s soul, and, under the best of circumstances, perhaps reveal hidden inner strength. Cancer is a dramatic world of death and survival. In movies, by contrast, cancer often feels like a plot contrivance. For one, cancer patients in movies all seem to suffer from a similar brand of movie cancer, which reveals few physical symptoms other than slightly paled skin and a propensity to wear knit caps. In a way, movie cancer often feels less like a genuine threat to the lives of the characters, and more like a bizarre fashion statement.
Sadly, Josh Boone’s The Fault in Our Stars (based on a novel by John Green), a well-meaning, deeply-felt, and wholly schmaltzy teen romance, tends ever so slightly toward the latter. It’s what my mother would call “a five hanky movie.†This is less a real-life examination of living with cancer, and more a typical heart-swelling teen romance melodrama, wherein the romance has a n intense inevitability. Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley give it their all as the two young lovers, both cancer sufferers, and their scenes together are very sweet, well-played, and occasionally tear-jerking. But through the film’s entire second half, as the tragedies begin to pile on, and the two young lovers begin to spend their entire time together trading romantic aphorisms about the Meaning Of It All, and learning to let go and live on, etc. etc., you may begin to feel a little too overwhelmed by tears, laughs, tears, and tears.
Woodley plays Hazel, a virginal sweetheart with lung cancer who carries a respirator wherever she goes, and has to wear a tube across her face, which does nothing to mask her elven good looks. She is flip about her situation, attending support groups just to appease her doting mother (Laura Dern). At one of these support groups, she meets the handsome, flawless jock Gus (Elgort) who immediately takes a shine to her, and aggressively woos her. Gus is a cancer survivor (he only has one foot), but seems to be in remission, and is all smiles, charms, and disarming flawlessness. He is one hair away from being a Nicholas Sparks-style Flawless Rescue Stud (the male equivalent of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl). Hazel seems to fall into this boy with little difficulty, and it’s not long before they’re having picnics in the park, chatting about their favorite books (she loves emotional journeys, he, adaptations based on video games), and texting via on-screen animated speech bubbles.
It’s not that The Fault in Our Stars does anything particularly grievous, it just does too much of what it has. The romance is wonderful. Sweet, even. Until the sentimentality begins to tip, and the two young lovers begin having romantic moments in the Anne Frank house, inspired by the life-affirming quotations from the famed Holocaust victim. Or when they begin composing one another’s eulogies. I understand that they, being young people, are just now learning to appreciate life, even as theirs may perhaps be truncated by disease. That’s the good part of the film. But a few scenes of realistic, pragmatic, technical dealing with the ins and outs of their afflictions would have been appreciated. Real cancer patients don’t always let their diseases define them. In this film, that’s almost entirely what the two young lovers do, attracted to each other over mutual suffering and not mutual personalities.
I don’t want this to sound like an awkward error in judgment, however – that would have to be reserved for an emotional cheap-shot cancer film like, say, Stepmom. This is a gallon of ice cream, when a scoop would have done. A pound of candy when all you wanted was a handful. There are many things to admire about The Fault in Our Stars, and you will most certainly mist up. Sadly, for this reviewer, the flaws just barely outweigh the virtues.
Rating: 2.5 Burritos
http://nosaelg.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-fault-in-our-stars-movie-review.html
Ihttp://nosaelg.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-fault-in-our-stars-movie-review.html love both the book and the movie.
Welp. That’s your opinion. And here is my opinionated response: <img src=”http://i.imgur.com/tyTc1Nl.jpg”>
I’m sorry but I an in love with the book, but I don’t think is a book about two kids that fall in love because of cancer, they fall in love because of the way they see each other, as any other teen she likes him because he is hot, and he likes her because he sees her the same way, I don’t think the movie could be overly sad, the book in itself although is quite funny, is also very sad, I don’t think I’ve met anyone that have read the book who hasn’t cry like a baby.
Hazel doesn’t have lung cancer. She has thyroid cancer with tumors in her lungs.
This is not a cancer story; it is a love story. It is a love story that happens to involve two young, intelligent cancer patients – not two cancer patients who fall in love because they’re sick. I don’t see them as being defined by cancer in the least, in fact I believe author John Green’s viewpoint was quite the opposite in that these teens are being themselves, living and loving with the passion that only first love has, in spite of cancer. You state that it seems their love is over the top because they have nothing in common, but not everyone who falls in love has similar interests or personalities. If that is your real expectation of how all intimate relationships should be defined, all I can say is good luck. On a personal note, before I keel over from my disease, I hope I have the privilege of choosing who writes my eulogy – and that’s coming from a 36 year old woman who has attended more funerals than the number of years many people who saw this movie have been in existence. So thanks for letting me agree to disagree.
I love how people with terminal diseases are just do pretty in movies. Pick actors who are believable. My father died of melanoma and I got to watch him slowly waste away for 4 years before he finally died. Sometimes I really hate Hollywood.
I must start with: I cannot begin to fathom what losing your father to melanoma was like for you. I can only sympathize at this point in my life.
But past that, why can’t people who happen to have cancer also be pretty? These actors are entirely believable. The actors are also real human
people themselves. They legitimately care about the project of making this film
adaptation. I’d say that every crew member apart of this film was
touched by it on a level deeper than a paycheck to put a roof over
their head. Of all the realistic fictions to come from a major motion picture company, I’d like to request that you place your hate elsewhere because while this movie will be pulling some major box office numbers, the stories behind this film are so much more important than that. It’s success can really change lives. And frankly, the business. I, for one, really hope it does.
KatOfDiamonds, the point is that cancer patients don’t have smooth skin or the perfect hair that these two do. Their body’s cells are destroying themselves — that is going to cause drastic, “unpretty” side-effects.
And you can’t say that “every crew member apart of this was touched by it on a level deeper than a paycheck.” You don’t know anyone who worked on this film and certainly can’t speak for the hundreds of production crew that it takes to make a movie. It also doesn’t make them “bad” people for not liking an updated version of the Mandy Moore classic rom-com “A Walk To Remember.” There’s a whole genre of “teen cancer patient finds love then dies” movies.