REVIEW | The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

The Story: Based on the best-selling novel by John Green, The Fault in Our Stars tells a love story of a cancer survivor and one girl who’s still fighting with it. It follows the journey of the two lovers who are just trying to live their lives as if one of them wasn’t dying. It is a tragic but heartfelt film about what we all want in life, true love.

The Facts: The Fault in Our Stars is written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Directed by Josh Boone and stars Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace Lancaster, Ansel Elgort as Augustus Waters, Nat Wolff as Issac, and Sam Trammell and Laura Dern as Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster.

My Overall Take on the Movie: I’ve been a fan of John Green for a very long time now, not because of his books but because of his YouTube channel VlogBrothers. I actually watched that channel for a long time before finding out he was an author but had never taken the time to read any of his book. I received a copy of The Fault in Our Stars for my birthday in January and read about 100 pages before deciding that I would much rather wait and just watch the movie with mostly fresh eyes, and boy am I glad I did. This movie is gut wrenching and also extremely heart warming. I was so happy watching it at some points and so extremely sad at others, and sometimes a little bit of both. If you enjoy a good love story then this film is for you. I could see this film being a very good date movie but not a movie to go see if you’re a guy and you wanna go catch a movie with your bros. This was in no way a bad movie but it was by no means a great movie. That doesn’t mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy it because trust me I did. It is a very solid movie and I would gladly spend my money to see it in theaters again, I just don’t think its something you necessarily have to see in theaters to get the full experience of it.

Things I liked: I enjoy love stories and I enjoy watching them play out. I loved see Sam Trammell in a role outside of True Blood because he’s always been my favorite actor on that show. I really liked the emotions this film pulled off and honestly I had to hold back tears because I didn’t want to be the guy who cries in a movie theater, but a few did slip out. I enjoyed the entire movie start to finish and I only have one real complaint with the movie which I’ll get to below.

Things I Didn’t Like: The only thing I didn’t like about the movie, and it is EXTREMELY minor, is that in the scene where Augustus first shows his prostetic leg it was very clearly CGI and it look pretty awful. But any scene after that it looked totally real and I was okay with it

On a side note that has nothing to do with the film itself, the showing that I was at was packed and in some of the more emotional scenes the sea of sniffling and sobbing teenage girls really took me out of the movie.

Rating: 8 out of 10

         Final Verdict: See it in theaters if you want but for sure buy it on Blu-Ray!!!

My Favorite Scene: PG-13 movies get one use of the word “Fuck” per film. And when Peter Van Houton was being a huge dick and Hazel told him to go fuck himself, I loved it because it was very unexpected from this movie and it made me laugh.