The Fault In Our Stars Review

CAUTION - SPOILERS.

You have to submit to the sheer emotional trauma experienced in this teen movie sensation, based on the colossal novel by John Green. The film portrays an 'epic love story' as told through the eyes of a certainly resilient Hazel Grace Lancaster (played by Shailene Woodley), and manages to take you through a whirlwind of emotions in the 126 minute running time. 

Hazel Grace Lancaster is a particularly intelligent and sarcastic teenage cancer patient whose thyroid lesions have metastasised to her lungs; her condition, once critical has soon stabilised with an experimental drug treatment, but leaves her wheeling around her portable oxygen tank, and forever having to sit down. After wanting to just be a normal teenager, she is forced, much to her dismay to go to a nearby cancer support group. It is here where she bumps into the other main protagonist of the story, Augustus Waters (portrayed by Ansel Elgort) as they joke about his prosthetic leg, oblivion and his infamous hamartia of putting a cigarette between his teeth and not allowing it to 'do the killing'. From the get go it looked as if they were destined to be together.

A debatably rash Augustus invites Hazel back to his house, where they both decide to read 

each others favourite novels: Hazel's being 'An Imperial Affliction' which soon, after more bonding, flirting and mind-blowingly effective quotes about oblivion, stars and love, would see them travel to Amsterdam together (much to Hazel's doctors' dismay) to meet the infamous author, Peter Van Houten.

A plane journey, and romantic dinner-date later and they show up at Van Houten's abode to find him drunk, uncooperative and down-right rude. He insults Hazel's cancer, and refuses to answer any questions about the book, the main reason for the duo's travel to Amsterdam. In an attempt to apologise for what a cantankerous sod Van Houten had been, his assistant Lidewjj treats them to a trip to the Anne Frank House, where Augustus and Hazel share their first kiss, after struggling up many flights of stairs. 

'After that I fell in love with him like you fall asleep, slowly and then all at once' Hazel Grace explains as Augustus and her become smitten in one another's company. The day after, as if to dampen the mood Augustus reveals his cancer has relapsed, and once back in America, his health dramatically worsens, forcing him to the wheelchair. He asks Hazel Grace and Isaac to read him their eulogies, and Hazel quotes Van Houten on 'big and small infinities'. After all three had shared tears, amongst every single person in the audience that night, all of a sudden Augustus was dead, and Hazel was left at the funeral with only a sheet of paper written by Augustus and delivered by Van Houten, stating his eulogy of her to show for their most definitely 'epic love story'.

I have to applaud how the movie managed to make you connect so much with the characters in such a short space of time that you both cry and laugh with them. The casting was perfect in my mind, as Ansel, and Shailene have such great chemistry on the screen, and the movie did a pretty good job at sticking to the books principles. I also have to applaud Shailene Woodley's ability to pull of that short hair!

I hate to be a downer, and however much I myself like this tragic story, but I feel as if the whole movie was leading up to something big, and then Augustus's death fell a little short, and happened all so quickly. If you had blinked in the cinema, you probably would have missed it. 

And is the whole franchise really worth all of the hype? I mean, it is a blooming good read, and very gripping to watch, but there are other books out there with slightly more to offer. Saying that, I think The Fault in Our Stars has a very unique ability to mix cancer, a love story, a death and no happy ending, and manage to pull it off. We connect with Augustus and Hazel, and really learn that we can dictate our lives. Oblivion is inevitable, but a sad ending isn't.

The title of the book is taken from Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/ But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Hazel and Augustus realise that cancer was always in the stars for them, though it was them to choose how to deal with it. And I think that is the best summary, or closing thought I could end on. Life is an object for you to mould, and that is exactly what our protagonists did.