Shailene Woodley In ” The Fault In Our Stars”
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Review by Joy Parris-You know that feeling when a movie clearly wants to make you cry, and you walk in thinking, Not today, Hollywood—and then twenty minutes later you’re blinking hard in the dark like it’s “allergies”? Yeah. “The Fault in Our Stars” is that movie. Audiences still love a good tear-jerker, and the weekend box office proved it: the film pulled in $48 million, ousting Tom Cruise’s summer blockbuster “Edge of Tomorrow.”
What makes this story hit isn’t just the diagnosis, or the looming tragedy, or the fact that you can practically hear tissues being opened in surround sound. It’s Hazel and Gus—two teenagers who refuse to be reduced to a cautionary tale. They share this acerbic wit and a low tolerance for anything fake or conventional, and they speak to each other like people who’ve already learned how flimsy small talk can be when life is actually on the line.
Hazel’s other constant companion is an oxygen tank, a presence so ordinary in her life it becomes part of the rhythm of who she is. Gus, meanwhile, jokes about his prosthetic leg with the kind of humor that’s half armor, half invitation: I’m not fragile, I’m still me. And of course they meet at a cancer support group, because fate in this movie has a dark sense of irony—but what follows is surprisingly unsentimental in the best way. Their love doesn’t arrive like a magical cure or a saintly lesson. It shows up messy, funny, sharp-edged, and honest.
And that’s the trick “The Fault in Our Stars” pulls off: it’s undeniably a tear-jerker, but it earns those tears by letting Hazel and Gus be complicated—sometimes romantic, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes angry, sometimes tender. You don’t cry because the movie tells you to; you cry because you start caring, and then it quietly reminds you what caring costs.
Bring tissues. And don’t bother pretending you won’t need them.
