It’s in Amsterdam that the film opens up visually - ditching the closeups and domestic interior scenes to take in the well-photographed surroundings - and Hazel and Augustus forge their most affecting connections. (In one of the pic’s most darkly funny scenes, Augustus mocks Hazel for wasting her wish on a trip to Disney World, “pre-miracle.”) But their rapport is believable, their chemistry palpable, and the film is never more likable than when it unhurriedly lingers on their low-key courtship.Ī few weeks into their relationship, Augustus springs a big surprise: Calling in a favor from a Make-A-Wish-type foundation, he’s arranged a trip for the two of them to Amsterdam, where Van Houten (Willem Dafoe) has apparently agreed to sit down with Hazel and answer her infinite questions about his book. Augustus is decidedly less developed, essentially functioning as a male version of the types of restorative free spirits usually played by Kate Hudson and Kirsten Dunst in Cameron Crowe movies, and prone to dandyish flourishes - particularly his habit of brandishing an unlit cigarette as a sort of totemistic charm against death - that surely worked better as literary metaphors than visual ones. Hazel is a great character, tart without being cynical, vulnerable without being needy, and capable of tossing out bons mots like “I’m the Keith Richards of cancer kids” without seeming like a writerly construct.
He asks Hazel out on a series of chaste hangout dates, reads her favorite book, stays up until the wee hours on the phone with her, and ever-so-gradually brings her out of her shell. Here she meets Augustus Waters ( Ansel Elgort), a strapping, clever, impossibly handsome 18-year-old whose basketball career was cut short when cancer took his right leg, but who appears to have since made a full recovery. Her parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammell) are a loving, lovable pair who worry that Hazel is becoming depressed, as she has no friends and spends her time endlessly rereading reclusive author Peter Van Houten’s postmodern cancer-themed novel, “An Imperial Affliction.” After some insistently gentle prodding, she agrees to attend a weekly church-basement support group hosted by sappy Jesus freak Patrick (Mike Birbiglia). She came perilously close to death as a preteen, but an experimental “miracle” treatment beat her disease back to relatively manageable levels: She has to breathe from a tube tethered to an oxygen tank she lugs around like a carry-on bag, and her lifespan has no clear prognosis, but she’s far from helpless. Based on John Green’s bestselling novel, the film offers the first-person accounts of Hazel Grace Lancaster (Woodley), a bright 16-year-old who can hardly remember not living with cancer.
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