In Hazel, the screenwriters have developed a hugely appealing but also believable (and often believably obnoxious) adolescent protagonist who handles the poor hand life has dealt her with grace, if not sagacity indeed, if you called her a martyr, she’d probably throw a punch your way. A noble mission, to be sure, and one that shows the filmmakers have the right instincts about how to tell this story, but ultimately The Fault in Our Stars doesn’t live up to these claims, as it takes few chances, frequently using sass as a smokescreen, hiding what’s unoriginal and cheaply sentimental about this story behind a veil of witticisms about oblivion and “cancer perks.”

As a result, they foreground this cocked-eyebrow notion of “the truth” as early and often as possible: This isn’t just “a movie,” Hazel’s voiceover intones over a close-up of Woodley’s wonderfully expressive eyes, but a document of authentic lived experience that dares to stare terminal cancer baldly in the face rather than hide behind euphemisms and syrupy montages.

Weber know what a difficult task they have in adapting John Green’s best-selling novel, about a tentative romance between two cancer-stricken teenagers, into a durable screen product that will appeal to younger target audience without quickly becoming a punchline for everyone else. Boone and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Sorry.” This warning-cum-promise, delivered by 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) in the voiceover monologue that opens The Fault in Our Stars, is the first and most telling moment of self-sabotage in Josh Boone’s faintly wry but mostly cloying film.

The fault in our stars movie analysis