Film review: The Fault in Our Stars

A starry-eyed story that doesn’t wallow in self-pity, The Fault in Our Stars is really about the unbridled optimism of youth.

Ansel Elgort, left, and Shailene Woodley in a scene from The Fault in Our Stars. Courtesy 20th Century Fox

Director: Josh Boone

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe

Three stars

You have to credit the director Josh Boone for taking on John Green’s bestselling young-adult romance novel: a love story based around two teenagers with cancer – now that’s a hard sell. Thankfully, he’s cast it well, with Shailene Woodley on winning form as Hazel, who has spent the majority of her short life living with metastatic thyroid cancer. At a support group, she meets Augustus Waters, who has already lost part of his leg to the disease but is determined to live each day with renewed vigour. She falls in love with him as quickly as we do.

A starry-eyed story that doesn’t wallow in self-pity, it’s really about the unbridled optimism of youth – whether being faced with terminal illness or Willem Dafoe’s cynical, booze-addled author, a hero of Hazel’s who turns out to be anything but. There are moments when the script threatens to buckle under the weight of human tragedy – not least in a sojourn to Anne Frank’s house (cancer and the Holocaust in one film is a little much). But thanks to the appeal of Woodley and Elgort, and firm guidance from Boone, it never sinks into mawkishness. Bring hankies.