The Fault in our stars review

  Before I start this was suppose to come out on Friday but I didn't see the movie until today. I was away from my computer on Saturday as well so sorry.


SPOILER!SPOILER!SPOILER!SPOILER!SPOILER!


 The Fault in our stars was a 2012 book by John Green (go watch crash course if you want to learn yet still be entertained.) The book is very good often praised for its genuine, honest approach towards a very complicated subject. It got very popular to the point where Hollywood made a movie out of it.


  Thankfully I can say Hollywood didn't ruin it and it is a very good movie which I do recommend watching even though 90% of you will probably end up crying (I am a lot more cold hearted so I didn't cry but everyone else in my theater did.) The film is about a girl with terminal cancer named Hazel who meets a boy who also had cancer named Augustus during a cancer support group. They become friends before eventually falling in love. And because I've never had reservations on SPOILERS, Augustus eventually dies of cancer leaving Hazel to cope.

  What the movie gets right as does the book is the honest and genuine approach towards the subject of cancer and dying. The emotion is very much there as well as the good intention. Shaneline Woodley is growing as an actresses and turns in one of her best performances, she brings the honesty and cynicism that would be required for the role of Hazel and balances them out very well.


  If were being honest here I have to say while reading the book "the fault in our stars" I never could really connect with Augustus mainly because he was more of a "manic pixie dream boy." Harshly the only time I did relate to him was when he was dying. In the movie I think I like Augustus more than I did in the book and that's due to the performance of Ansol Elgort. While he still has a bit of those traits, Elgort makes Gus seem way more real and I could actually identify him with boys I have met. He and Woodley have very good chemistry even though it's kind of creepy that in Divergent they played brother and sister while here they play boyfriend and girlfriend.


  Like in the book and here in the movie my favorite character in this is Mrs. Lancaster, I always found her interesting and felt the most sympathy for her because she had to watch her only child die right in front of her. Laura Dern turns in an excellent and heartbreaking performance. While I didn't cry the line Dern delivers "I won't be a mom anymore" was the line that made me pause in the book and was the line that stung the most in the movie.


  Everyone else turns in a good performance, Nat Wolf as Isaac and Willem Defoe as Peter Van Houten both turn in very funny performances that add levity to the movie so that way you didn't walk out of the movie feeling completely depressed and hopeless.


   Of course not every movie is perfect, and hardly any movie adaptation of a book is better than the actual book or even as good. This is one of those adaptations that keeps way too much from the movie. For example we get a montage of the support group counselor Patrick's back story when that was no where needed and could have been cut from the movie. There are a lot of scenes like that. In a movie adaptation it has the opportunity to the change things that might not have been too good in the book and fix it to make a better movie. Most adaptations don't do that but here sometimes it doesn't.
  
   In the book Augustus finds out that he got his cancer back before the trip and doesn't tell Hazel about it until the day before they leave Amsterdam. It would have been better and more impactful if they had it where Augustus didn't find out his cancer came back until they got back from Amsterdam. This movie also should have cut out dialogue where the scene should have been quiet.


  Some of the dialogue which I found a bit cheesy in the book are heard in the movie and made even cheesier when spoken aloud. They also do the thing where they when someone text another person the text appears as bubbles on the screen which always ticks me off in movies whenever they do that.


  Another thing is the use of narration in the movie. I hate narration in movies because I feel that it lessens the pain of what's suppose to be going on, on screen because instead of naturally feeling what's being put on screen we are told what to feel by a voice. I also feel that due to this it's lazy screen writing.


I give The fault in our stars a 8/10- good emotion, good acting but took too much from the book, took some of the bad things of the book, sucky narration and a few more pet peeves here and there.