Grace

Rating: 7/10 (8 June 2014)

Greetings again from the darkness. Having not read John Green's book, and missing his targeted demographics by gender and a few decades, the narrator's very early criticism of my favorite teen movie "Say Anything ..." had me quickly questioning whether I was going to make it through this one. The greatness of Shailene Woodley soon won me over and I was all in.
The story revolves around a teenage girl named Hazel(Woodley) who was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and has remained alive and active thanks to an experimental drug. She is an exceptionally perceptive girl and carries the burden of worrying about how (or if) her parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammell) will carry on after her death. She attends a teenage support group to keep her parents happy, and bumps into a friendship with a spirited young man named Gus (Ansel Elgort) ... a self-labeled one-legged 18 year old virgin cancer survivor.
You guessed it ... this is a tear-jerker. But it's even more of a love story. Specifically, it's a story about the joy in finding someone to love. While the cancer is ever-present, it's the love story that captures our interest. When the story veers from that, it suffers. The trip to Amsterdam and the segment with Willem Dafoe seems out of place until it's eclipsed by the final scene at the Anne Frank house. I understand the point, but it struck me as forced emotions ... in a movie that was not lacking emotion.
Regardless of all of that, the reason to see this is the genius of Shailene Woodley. Neither she nor Elgort are teenagers, but they perfectly capture the adorable balance between awkward and witty. Woodley's range is staggering (The Descendants, The Spectacular Now, Divergent) and she and Jennifer Lawrence should be blessing us with their talent for many many years to come.
The screenplay was co-written by Scott Neustadler and Michael H Weber who also co-wrote both (500) Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now. Their feel for dialogue and budding relationships is spot on, delivering a level of respect to both sexes. This film is very sweet and filled with grace, and tainted only by the saccharine musical choices and the Amsterdam sequence.