DIRECTOR: Josh Boone
LEAD
CAST: Shailene
Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe SCREENWRITER: Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber PRODUCER: Wyck
Godfrey, Marty Bowen EDITOR: Robb Sullivan MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Mike Mogis, Nate Walcott GENRE: Drama, Comedy CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ben Richardson DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox LOCATION: United States, Amsterdam RUNNING TIME: 126 minutes
Technical assessment: 3.5
Moral assessment: 3
MTRCB rating:
PG
CINEMA rating:
V 14
Sixteen-year-old
Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) suffers from thyroid cancer and lugs
around an oxygen tank connected to the tube in her nose. She doesn’t look like she’s dying
tomorrow, and in fact is the least sick-looking person in the church-run
support group of fellow cancer patients her mother (Laura Dern) insists she
attend. In one of those group
sessions she dutifully drags herself to each week, she (literally) bumps into
Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), himself in remission since he lost one leg to
osteosarcoma. Augustus is there to
accompany and support his one-eyed buddy Isaac, in danger of also losing the
other eye to cancer. For
self-confident total charmer Gus, it’s probably love at first sight, but the
sensible and cautious Hazel will not warm up until after a few meetings. Just as when the sun is shining on
Hazel and Gus’s world, a thunderstorm strikes and dark clouds form. Sounds corny?
A wag
once called The fault in our stars
“Twilight on chemo”, it being an ill-starred romance between two cancer-stricken
teenaged virgins whose optimism no cancer can corrupt. To use-your-head viewers, the story is
too good to be real or believed in, even manipulative in its attempt to capture
its target demographics—not cancer patients but adolescent girls. To
use-your-heart moviegoers, it’s a story movies need to tell and people ought to
believe in nowadays. From the
sniffling going on inside the theater it seems there are more “hearts” than
“heads” in the audience. Credit is
due to the convincing performances of Woodley and Elgort (sister and brother in
Divergent), and the all-too-powerful
portrayal by Willem Dafoe (as author Van Houten) for giving this midyear tear-jerker
its unique selling point as it competes against biggies and heavies (Maleficent, Noah, Edge of Tomorrow, How to
train your dragon 2, Blended) for the multiplex crowd’s attention.
Hazel,
who does not want anyone to fall in love with her lest her early demise hurt
that person, ends up (spoiler coming) grieving over a loss. “It not fair,” she cries. As though having terminal cancer
weren’t bad enough, these young lovers must be heartbroken, too? But even though cancer sufferers may
never find physical healing, The fault
in the stars shows there is another kind of healing to be found in the
devotion and support of parents, in the sympathy of the community, and—with the
stars cooperating—in the love of the one person who’ll make the greatest difference
in one’s short life. The
director’s depiction of the well-intentioned but rather contrived approach of
the church group in extending support to Hazel and other terminally ill
patients presents a challenge to mission-oriented church organizations to
examine why their act fall short of expectations. Parents are cautioned, too, to be armed with answers in case
their teenagers ask about the two virgins pursuing the innocent first kiss to
its logical conclusion without the benefit of marriage.
