Laura Dern and Sam Trammel convince as parents who play along with their daughter’s blasé affect as much as is possible for two people with a personal apocalypse on the horizon. Ansel Elgort nails Augustus Waters's smirking, age-specific confidence: Gus, who as “a metaphor” habitually puts a cigarette between his teeth without smoking it, is meant to be the kind of self-impressed teenage boy who’s only charming because he knows he’s ridiculous. With her raspy voice and shy demeanor, Shailene Woodley’s Hazel is a variant on the outwardly reserved but inwardly vibrant teenager the actress previously played so well in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now. are also fully human, protective of one another and concerned about the effect their illnesses have on their friends and family.īoone’s put together a good-looking, well-acted affair.
This precociousness comes off as a bit like an act, because it is: They’ve created weird, erudite, unflappable personas to deal with the fact that cancer, and the way people treat cancer, tries to reduce them into just another sad sick kid. They banter about getting “cancer perks,” talk about their deaths in terms of “when” not “if,” and make fun of their own ailments-“my body is basically made out of cancer,” one of them cheerfully boasts. The movie keeps Hazel’s no-BS attitude intact, as well as that of her love interest, Augustus Waters, and their friend Isaac. This is in large part what made Green’s tale about young-adult love and illness so distinct: At every turn, its characters reject the notion the repackaging of real human pain into flat, inspirational narratives, even as the novel itself manages to tell a moving and, yes, inspirational narrative. The clear message is that Hazel and The Fault in Our Stars are well aware of cancer-fighting clichés as clichés. In the John Green novel from which Josh Boone’s film is adapted, Hazel dismissively summarizes an hour at Patrick’s group therapy: “Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost hope was clung to families were both celebrated and denounced it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it tears were shed comfort proffered.”
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