Author John Green (center) plays around on a swing set with lead actors Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. John Green is the best.
The Fault in Our Stars seemed pretty much doomed from the start. Bearing that in mind, it’s a remarkably enjoyable movie.
Based on the 2012 book which was a smash hit with critics, audiences and publishers, the film follows narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), a 16-year-old cancer patient who is at the stage where she could go downhill at any minute. Early in the story, Lancaster meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), who at 18 is recovering from osteosarcoma, and the two begin to fall in love. The film centers around their attempt to pack a life time of experience into their numbered days.
The book version was written by John Green, and it’s his poetry and electricity that make the book go. His words pop off the page like Dickens, and it never would have translated to film anyway because it’s primarily narration. It’s the kind of thing that won’t translate to film at all, and becomes boring and obvious when people attempt to do it — think of Divergent and the animated Dark Knight Returns as examples of movies that, at various points, jump the shark to fit in a cool line that was simply narrated in the book. With the beating heart of the source material unable to make the transition, the movie was already at a significant handicap.
