(USA, 126 min.)
Dir. Josh Boone, Writ. Scott Neustadter & Michael H.
Weber
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat
Wolff, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe.
Critics and audiences everywhere proclaim The Fault in Our Stars a bona fide
tearjerker. It’s the Love Story for a
generation, says solid word of mouth as friends, writers, and everyone under
the starry sky give stories of masses of teens flocking to the box office for
this YA cancer weepie based on the bestselling novel by John Green. Having a
good cry seems like a refreshing departure from a stream of catatonic dystopian
pics cluttering the adolescent movie market, though, so good on The Fault in Our Stars for getting young
audiences in tune with their emotions.
This buzz prompts one to approach The Fault in Our Stars with expectations of epic catharsis. I expected crying; I expected weeping; I expected runny-nosed blubbering. Yet I felt absolutely nothing while watching this film.
The Fault in Our Stars
betrays every effort of the mechanics that drive emotional manipulation. Each
click and tug on the heartstrings, cynical as that sounds, is evident in each
turn in the tragic—and tragically self-conscious—romance of star-crossed
lovers/Cancer Kids Hazel (Divergent’s
Shailene Woodley) and Augustus (Ansel Elgort, one of Divergent’s bit players). There seems little point in having a good
weepie, though, if it demonstrates every effort to elicit an emotional
reaction, but prompts nothing but detached coldness. The Fault in Our Stars simply fails to conjure any genuine emotion.
Perhaps the fault in Our
Stars is the unbearable precociousness of the adaptation by Scott
Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the extremely talented writers behind (500) Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now (the latter is a
significantly stronger teen-set romance with Miss Woodley). The Fault in Our Stars probably reads
much better than it plays, so the twee quirkiness of the script feels false and
forced. Hazel and Gus abound in misguided literary references and overly
self-aware character tics. Hazel, for one, obsesses over the finale of her
favourite novel, which leads the couple on a “Make a Wish Foundation”-type
adventure as Gus whisks Hazel to Amsterdam using his special wish to ask the
curmudgeonly author (Willem Dafoe) some basic plot points. Hazel’s total
misunderstanding of the open-endedness of the book, which sees its protagonist
die midsentence in the book’s final line, is an unsubtle metaphor for Hazel’s
concern for how her parents (Sam Trammell and a terrific Laura Dern) will
survive her.
The muddled literary motif is one of the major tells in the
jejune literary ambitions of The Fault in
Our Stars since the film handles Hazel’s fixation on the book rather
clumsily. The teens can’t see beyond plot and character, and The Fault in Our Stars struggles equally
in fleshing out its skeleton. The trip to Amsterdam makes Hazel’s query of life
after death especially icky with a trip to the Anne Frank Museum that gives
Hazel a firsthand parallel to her tragic heroine (i.e.: herself) in the real
life example of someone who endured long after her death was etched in prose.
Likening Hazel to the world’s most famous Holocaust survivor seems a bit
tasteless, especially since the trip to the Anne Frank Museum ends in a boisterous
make out session that prompts applause from the hordes of tourists watching the
kids’ PDA in Anne Frank’s attic. Ew.
If Hazel’s character tics and story arcs are annoying, they
are nothing in comparison to the smorgasbord of fey quirks that characterize
Gus. He is easily the most annoying movie character of the year. His becomes immediately
tiresome when Hazel introduces herself with her full name—Hazel Grace Lancaster—and
then insists that she likes to be called Hazel. Gus henceforth calls her Hazel
Grace for the rest of the film, just, you know, because it seems like the
dashing thing to do. Gus, a total poser, walks around with unlit cigarettes in
his mouth to defy cancer. “It’s a metaphor,” he tells anyone and everyone so
that they can see how defiant, how heroic, and how smart he is. Tuh, cigarettes
aren’t the only things that cause cancer, Gus!
The character tics are matched by the calibre of
performances with Woodley easily outshining her co-star. Woodley handles the
complexity of her character extremely well. Hazel marks Woodley’s most outwardly
emotional performance to date—even more than her strikingly poignant
performance in The Descendants—and The Fault in Our Stars gives an
impressive one-two punch with Woodley’s resilient turn in Divergent earlier this year. Elgort, on the other hand, feels
wholly inorganic in this performance. Gus comes off as a calculated leading
man, conscious of every eyebrow cock and titled smile to coax the audience into
sobbing buckets of tears. Ditto the awkwardly forced performance by Nat Wolff
as Gus’s partner in crime Isaac, who tries way too hard to charm the ladies.
More than any fault in the film is the palpable whiff of unnatural acting. Shed
a tear not for poor Gus and Hazel—sorry, Hazel Grace—but for obvious, artificial
melodrama.
The Fault in Our Stars
only finds genuine heartache in the ever-dependable quivering jaw of Laura Dern,
who suffers silently as she watches Hazel enjoy her one fleeting chance at
romance. It’s far more moving to watch a mother cherish each last moment she
shares with her dying daughter, especially when Hazel becomes more standoffish
and aggressive to her parents so that she may spend her dying days with Gus. The
quaintness of the young lovers’ romance kills everything around them, though,
so though, so the effect is muted. Dern’s performance injects a genuine sense
of loss into The Fault in Our Stars
and belongs in a much better film.
Director Josh Boone (Stuck
in Love aka Writers) never really
finds a natural groove for the material. The
Fault in Our Stars is wildly uneven with its annoying onscreen texts and
social media blurbs—look to Chef for
far better onscreen integration of the digital realm—and its use of
self-conscious wannabe-literate voiceover to manipulate viewers’ emotions. The
film tries too hard to be cute while it simultaneously pushes every button to trigger
sentimentality. A fake funeral finale showcases a commendable monologue from
one performer, but the scene has an overall preciousness that reeks of some
tragic Harold and Maude wannabe-type
celebration of love and death. It's just so annoying that one cannot wait for Hazel and Gus to die. One’s restlessness with Fault’s blatant attempt to reap catharsis ultimately metastasizes
into something fatal, which seems incredibly ironic since this cancer weepie is
so utterly benign.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Fault in Our Stars is now in wide release.
