FILM REVIEW The Fault In Our Stars

STAR-CROSSED LOVERS?Shailene Woodley (left) and Ansel Elgort star in ‘The Fault In Our Stars’.

A feel-good kind of weepie


Cinema
Daniel Carey

LEGEND has it that Irish cyclist SeΡn Kelly once nodded in answer to a radio interviewer’s question. In his autobiography ‘Hunger’, the Waterford man claims not to remember the incident, but it’s not difficult to imagine it happening.
There’s a poignant counterpoint to that possibly apocryphal anecdote in Josh Boone’s movie ‘The Fault In Our Stars’. Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a teenager suffering from cancer, has just suffered a health-related setback, is refusing to answer calls or text messages from Gus (Ansel Elgort), a fellow cancer sufferer who is now in remission. Eventually, she calls him back but, asked ‘Are you okay?’ all she can do is shake her head before finally the word ‘No’ comes out.
Even if it arguably becomes the thing it professes to hate, there’s a lot to like about ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ – wise, funny and based on John Green’s 2012 book. The only thing I knew about it in advance was what I heard from Ivan Yates on radio. The Newstalk breakfast presenter called it the best film he had ever seen and said he had cried at it. That’s not my style, but I could hear quite a bit of soft weeping during the viewing I attended, and not all of it from teenage girls.
The star-crossed lovers meet at a support group. Romance blooms against the background of terminal illness. Gus has lost a leg. Hazel waxes lyrical about a book called ‘An Imperial Affliction’, and they dream of visiting Peter Van Houten, its reclusive author, in Amsterdam. There’s great chemistry between the leads, and the main characters are easy to root for. They don’t mope around feeling sorry for themselves. This is a feel-good kind of weepie, if that isn’t a contradiction.
The script (from ‘(500) Days of Summer’ veterans Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber) is witty, if occasionally pretentious, and apparently many of the best lines survived the transition from page to screen. Gus’s habit of putting a cigarette in his mouth but never lighting it draws short shrift on an aeroplane, where he’s told be an air hostess: “That metaphor? It’s prohibited on today’s flight.”
Over dinner, Gus announces: “I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person, so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it”. If nothing else, boys named Augustus now finally have an on-screen altar ego other than Master Gloop, the fat kid who got stuck in the pipe in ‘Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory’.
Laura Dern and Sam Trammell (from ‘True Blood’) play Hazel’s parents, while Willem Dafoe pops up with a memorable, nasty cameo. Nat Wolff turns in a great performance as Gus’s friend Isaac, who smashes basketball trophies after a bad break-up while the two leads discuss literature, and later throws eggs at his ex-girlfriend’s car with reasonable accuracy for a blind kid.
Having avoided most of the pitfalls its subject matter throws up, the last half-hour takes a disappointing turn for the conventional. As the emotional heart strings get pulled, we witness applause for a kiss in Anne Frank’s attic and an episode reminiscent of ‘PS: I Love You’ (I haven’t seen it, but Gerard Butler’s terrible accent is imprinted on my brain from witnessing the trailer).
And yet, most people around me went for the Kleenex, not the bucket. And even for those of us in the middle who are left a little underwhelmed by the closing stages, the emotional roller-coaster that was ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ had something to tell us about making the most of now.

Rating 7 out of 10