The Fault in our Stars

This review may contain spoilers.

For a long time people have urged me to read John Green novels and apparently this film was very accurate to the books; which really makes me want to never read a John Green novel. I would give The Fault in our Stars a 5.5/10.

This film depicted cancer incredibly, the idea of terminal illness was very well portrayed.It also had a great way of showing the fallout of such diseases on the people around the ill person in a great way.

Shailene Woodley, who played Hazel, was really great, she displayed each and every emotion perfectly and had a mastery over playing subtlety as well as full blown moments of emotion.

It was Willem Dafoe, who played Van Houten, that reminded this film what real acting was. In the two scenes he occupies Dafoe gives a much more harrowing and grimmer performance than anyone else in the cast could hope to muster. It was a miraculous resuscitation watching Dafoe perform this tortured and grieving man.

This film had some terribly generic music, it felt like something completely sappy throughout. I despise this movie for being so predictable, so cliched, but what I really hate is that it tried to be deeper than it was. It's the same reason I don't watch Skins. Kids don't talk like this. People don't talk like these actors talked. Nothing about this film felt real, it was all just one big bloated exaggeration. It got to a point where I didn't even care that Augustus died because I saw it coming from the opening scene. This can be catalogued under other similar young abult novel turned to films such as Twilight.

Nat Wolff, who played Isaac, was a poorly constructed character who was only given four scenes in the entire film; you didn't believe he was really Augustus' best friend because he had no presence. Laura Dern and Sam Trammell, who played Frannie and Michael, were terribly unconvincing as parent figures; they dithered and they weren't strong. But it was Ansel Elgort, who played Augustus, that really let this film down. Elgort gave a two dimensional performance for most of the film and was entirely out of Woodley's league as far as acting skill went. The character of Augustus felt fictional and he wasn't very likable either because he only ever seemed false.

May this film fade into oblivion.