Twitview: Great cast, sweet story. If you don’t tear up by the end you’re dead inside. B+
Every so often a story comes around that taps into a zeitgeist the world never knew it had. John Green’s The Fault in our Stars, about two teens that fall in love despite the Cancer of Damocles hanging over their heads. Narrated by Hazel (Shailene Woodley, Divergent), one of the young lovers, Green seemed to nail the voice of the young and terminally ill. As a thyroid cancer survivor myself (18 years NEC!), it sounded real, and refreshing. But the sweeping adoration for the novel and it’s young protagonists was a surprise to me. Not that it’s not a good book; it’s a sweet story that you can’t help but plow through in one sitting, no matter how much you’d like to make the story last by rationing it out to yourself. But the Harry Potter/Twilight-esque love of TFiOS puzzled me. Until now.
By bringing this story to the screen, director Josh Boone (Stuck in Love) manages to show the love rather than imagine it, demonstrate exactly how difficult it is to live with illness rather than guess at it, and watch young lovers fall in love rather than see it from a single POV. The Fault in Our Stars just works.
