Title: The fault in our stars
Year: 2014
Genre: Drama, Romance
Director: Josh Boone
Writer: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (screenplay); John Green (book)
Runtime: 126min
Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe
Produc.: Temple Hill Entertainment
Budget: $12 million approx.
At only 13, lung cancer is detected to Hazel (Shailene Woodley), and on the verge of death, an experimental treatment is what saves her. Years later, her parents make her attend a support group which doesn´t excites her, until she meets there a boy named Augustus (Ansel Elgort). "Gus," to whom an osteosarcoma had snatched him off a leg, doesn´t attend it for his own wellness, but to accompany a friend.
Based on John Green´s novel, The fault in our stars is a little bit long, teen romantic drama, where two kids touched by variants of the same disease find each other and fall in love, with all what that entails, given the circumstances.
My rating: 6/10
To suffer, at 16, from anything other than a cold or the chicken pox, I think would be an injustice, when being so much road ahead. There would be nothing to reproach Hazel if her most usual face was of bitterness, if she depended on drugs and on a ventilator, and had to have regular check-ups, plus never knowing when would be she taking her last breath. For all this is that, when hitting Gus she would be giving the timeliest and welcoming accidental step.
Two years older than Hazel, Gus is an optimistic and of great self-esteem boy, of whose story with cancer is not spoken much until further on, except for us to learn that he´s using a prosthetic leg. What matters is that Gus has no problems asking her out, disregarding that she breathes through tubes and starting a relationship with the girl he likes.
The fault in our stars addresses, on one side, one of the most beautiful sensations known to man, as it is being in love, while touches one of the worst fears. The fear of losing that person for whom you feel so much affection. The big problem into which, however it falls, is that the romantic part, beyond the cliché, is excessively long. While the gripping and tear drama these two lovebirds in disgrace are condemned to live, appears quiet late.
Watching it reminded me of Love and other drugs (2010), that although, with another kind of developing and already adult characters, did also had a boy (Jake Gyllenhaal) willing to make his life next to a girl, sick, (Anne Hathaway) in this case, with Parkinson's, and when he himself knew what it meant, besides that, from outside, he was encouraged to leave her. In itself, making comparisons, given the differences between one another wouldn´t sound very fair. But what they do have in common is a love story that if you saw in the first one, it may be a bit repetitive to see in this other. Hazel herself is, in this teen drama, the one in charge of telling Gus that, given her condition, nothing can ever happen between them, that surpasses friendship. Something we already know will happen anyway.
The fault in our stars has got an interesting dramatic content, with questions like How to live, knowing that what you´ve got is terminal? How to live the falling in love, when, perhaps, the time they´ve got is too thin? How is it your daughter´s condition lived as a parent, when you know that she´ll be living the world long before you? Or who said that the terminally ill are not entitled to find someone?
The bad thing is that all this is mostly reserved to us for last. While before we are bored with each step of a love story which, throughout the first act and then some more, lacks of elements that could put it above others (although undoubtedly, may be liked by the female audience, just the same). So much so that, arrived the dramatic chapter (which had already begun, but very segmented) one could say ¡Hallelujah! But not for wanting the worse, with a morbid desire to see the characters suffer, but because outside the obvious fact that these guys had met for sad reasons, the process of "seeing each other", "get to knowing each other" and "falling in love" it´s just as cheesy and beautiful and gooey as has always been seen, and made me say to myself: when´s the real conflict coming?
It would, however, be unfair of me not to highlight the very good performances in both lead roles, which make one to really feel that when they cry they do so because they suffer from their both, strong and harsh reality.
By the way, if this adaptation was perhaps true to the novel, then I dare to say, of what was written by John Green, that it must have too many needles pages at the beginning.
