The Star is Shailene Woodley

Rating: 6/10 (16 October 2014)

Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) is tired of her parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammell)'s help and the support of the support groups. The doctor diagnose her as depressed. That is until she meets Augustus (Ansel Elgort) at a support group meeting. He's a one-legged cancer survivor who share the same view of life. Hazel gives Augustus a book 'An Imperial Affliction' written by Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe) to read. Van Houten invites them to visit him in Amsterdam, but the meeting doesn't turn out the way they hoped.
This is a perfectly OK teen melodrama with a great performance from Shailene Woodley. She nails this character through the ups and downs. Her scene with Willem Dafoe in Amsterdam is terrific. She doesn't just hold her own but she comes out on top. Ansel Elgort is too one dimensional. I think that has a lot to do with the writing. He is all sugary charms. Even his bad driving is engineered to endear him to the audience. He's not a real person but rather a manufactured character.
This movie could do with some swearing. This is where the MPAA rating system really screws with a movie. It's a movie that needs the PG rating. As such, bad language that would fit these characters' situation is just gone. One would expect these characters to have the gallows humor and the swear words to match. I guess there isn't much the filmmakers can truly do about it. One scene that encapsulates the movie for me is the kiss in Anne Frank's house. As the kiss develops, I thought that this is going to be awkward. Once they start kissing, the scene actually is touching. It works and then everybody starts clapping. It becomes over-written. It's a movie with a great young star that is trying to do something interesting but just tries too hard with its writing.