My friends dragged me to the cinema this past week. They all wanted to see “The Fault In Our Stars” because they had all read the book and promised it would be an amazing film which I would thank them for making me watch. They were half right, it was an amazing film. But i didn’t thank them. I left the theatre crying my eyes out.
So long story short, girl meets boy at cancer support. And that’s kinda all I can tell you without giving away spoilers, because it’s one of those films where there’s not like a huge big thing happen (well there sort of is) but lots of small cute things happen that make you feel fuzzy on the inside. But they meet at cancer support. That means at least one of them has cancer. Cancer hardly ever has a happy ending.
It’s unbelievably cute though. It’s nice because it’s not sexual really either. It’s just a boy meets girl thing. There’s a picnic, they hunt down their favourite author, they both support a mutual (also has cancer) friend over a breakup. They say OK to each other a lot. It reminds me of highschool love, although I think the characters are in college. It made me remember how cute it is to get a text from that person you really like, and what it’s like to talk to them on the phone for hours. It made me want to have that again.
Now it’s real praise to the movie to say it wasn’t sloppy. It wasn’t corny and it wasn’t like a rom-com. It was sweet and believable. The characters weren’t perfect, and that was nice. There was real effort put into the relationship, in ways that if you re-enacted it, people wouldn’t look at your like you were a crazy person.
The gritty parts aren’t omitted either. There’s a strong juxtapositioning of the happy love blooming, and the hardships of fighting cancer. There’s unease, worry and tension. There’s anger, denial and hope. This movie is an emotional roller coaster, and I guess if I liked roller coasters I would have liked this a lot more. As it is, I’m terrified of them, and I don’t actually enjoy crying.
It’s chicken soup for your soul. It makes you feel alive and human, but it hurts at points and then you smile at the ending even though you were praying it wouldn’t end like that. I don’t like bitter sweet things either. When it comes to love, I want things to be just sweet. However life isn’t like that and nor is this movie.
If you’re a tough manly man, go watch it. If you’re a couple who scoffs at lovey-dovey films because it’s cool to do that, go watch it. If you’re single and feeling alone and angry at everyone who’s happily in a relationship (I raise my own hand) then go watch it. Because it makes you fall in love with falling in love, and then it makes you hate it for making the main characters fall in love.
The actors by the way are brilliant. Totally perfect for their roles, I can’t find a fault. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to their acting, it was good enough to be completely engrossed in the plot. I’m sure if i watched it again I could pick out faults, but i’m not going to watch it again so they get a “perfect”. I am however going to make my little sister watch it and watch her watching it because I like to make her cry, and The Fault in Our Stars will make her cry like there’s no tomorrow. That’s a cruel thing to say, but then that’s how I felt the director must have felt. Like “Hahaha, they’re gonna cry and feel so much. Goddamnit it I’m a cruel, but genius, son of a bitch!”