Fault In Our Stars

Fault In Our Stars

IMDB: 8   Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Plot: Based on the bestseller by John Green, two teens with cancer fall in love, travel to Amsterdam to meet a recluse author. Much sadness ensues.

My Thoughts: As an over view I can feel good recommending this movie, it is a solid B-. The film is well done in most aspects for majority of the film. The acting is spot on, the writing is mostly good and the film looks great. If you are thinking about watching it or kinda on the fence about it go ahead it tells a story with no real surprises but it tells it well and you'll cry a little, my living room got a bit misty while watching it. Now time for me to get nit picky and spoilery so if you want to be 100% fresh stop reading now.

So Juno, sorry I mean Hazel Grace has cancer and has to wear an oxygen tube to breathe, her doctor and mother worry about her having depression, a common side effect of cancer because well no shit. So they talk her into going to a support group for kids with cancer, there she meets Isaac a kid who lost an eye to cancer and is going to lose his other eye, with Isaac is his friend Augustus Waters an intelligent teen who lost a leg to cancer. Hazel and Gus strike up a friendship and swap favorite books, hers is by a reclusive author named Van Houten about a girl dying of cancer and the book ends in the middle of a sentence infuriating Gus. Hazel has questions about the ending, about what happened to the other characters in the book, did the girl's mom move on and get married? Gus uses his make a wish wish to visit Van Houten in Amsterdam with Hazel.

Van Houten is played beautifully by Willem Defoe, He is a coarse bitter man who shuns company. When Hazel insists on asking questions about what happened after the novel he tells her he doesn't know, that he doesn't have any answers. He then spouts the book/film's infamous line, "Some infinities are shorter than others." Hazel is not satisfied by this and demands an answer to this Van Houten tells her that there simply is no answer and that he will not molly coley her just because she has cancer, that it sucks she is sick but shit happens. I think we're supposed to be shocked and disgusted by Van Houten because of this but through the whole movie we've had Hazel talk about wanting to be treated normally and now she is pissed because someone isn't going to treat her special. Not to mention his original response rings true, the book ended and he doesn't know what happened afterwards many authors feel this way and her demand to know more comes across as annoying and kinda sad.

Van Houten's assistant, the one who arranged the meeting hoping to bring him out of his self exile, feels bad about how the meeting went and takes the two teens out to see the sites of Amsterdam how these sites don't include a drug scene I'm not sure I mean they have cancer the least you can do is get them high right? No instead she takes them to see the Anne Frank house you know as a pick me up. The Anne Frank house is several stories and there is no elevator, did I mention that Hazel has to carry an oxygen tank because she can't breathe, she struggles up the multiple stairwells and is able to make it to the top, the attic where Anne hid and there amongst pages of the diary and an audio track of someone reading entries Hazel is overcome with her love of Gus and they kiss slowly and awkwardly and it is sweet... until the camera pulls back and there is a room full of tourist who do not know their story watching two teens make out in the attic of the Anne Frank house and those tourist slow clap. Let me say that again a group of tourist in the Anne Frank house, see two teens making out in the attic of the Anne Frank house and having no knowledge of the last ninety minuets of the movie SLOW CLAPPED, THEY FUCKING SLOW CLAPPED! All good will this movie had built from me was washed away at that moment, I became physically angry and no matter how much they tugged at my heart later all I could think was they had a Slow clap.