The Fault In Our Stars (12A) 

Directed by Josh Boone 

4/5 

THE Fault In Our Stars is the story of a cancer-stricken teenage couple which has been turned into a feature film in Hollywood’s unashamed search for box-office gold. 

The hordes of fans of John Green’s multi-million selling book won’t be disappointed, as this is a faithful adaptation of his acerbically witty and unsugar-coated cancer love story. 

It’s narrated by its protagonist, the 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) who,  forced to attend a cancer support group by her mother (Laura Dern), meets and falls for the dashing 17-year-old Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort). 

He has a prosthetic leg, a consequence of his illness and her constant companion is an oxygen tank in a wheelie case as her lungs are shot due to thyroid cancer. 

The two share the same caustic wit and disdain for the conventional. 

Under Josh Boone’s direction the film captures the book’s razor-sharp humour, insightfulness and irreverence, along with its lack of sentimentality. 

Neither does it baulk at its mawkish subject matter. It humanises young cancer patients, showing that they are more than the sum of their illness, by portraying the normal problems of angst and heartbreak they face as teenagers while having to cope with cancer too. 

Woodley excels as Hazel, giving her most impressive and mature performance to date, while Elgort is charming and charismatic as Augustus. Endearingly, he keeps referring to her by her full name. 

Of course their romance is doomed from the beginning but, as we wait for the sword of Damocles to fall, it is an illuminating and gripping if heartbreaking journey. 

As cancer films go this isn’t as emotionally manipulative as most but do take tissues.