-Contains spoilers-

The screen adaptation of John Green's 2012 young-adult bestseller about star-crossed teens came out on the 5th of June in Australia and recently I just watched it. The book and movie follow Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters who meet at a cancer support group. I was a big of the novel so I was going to be a harsh critic. One of the reasons my friends don’t like watching movie with me because if the movie was a book I’ll point out every different scene from the book. When popular books or books that you love get adapted into movies, there’s always the fear that you’re about to watch your favourite story get brutally abused. I was so happy the movie stayed true to the book though so they only time I was actually talking was to reassure my friends that I was alright. Before watching and reading the Fault in Our Stars I was so oblivious to cancer. I have never had never had any close relatives with cancer, so the book and movie were very insightful for me.

In the introductory voice-over, we are promised by the heroine Hazel Grace Lancaster that it won't be a typical terminal illness story that “sugar coats” the characters' afflictions. I feel like that movie is a mixture of both. It slightly romanticises cancer and terminal illness, but also shows the real reality of living with one. The heroine at the heart of the story is Hazel Grace Lancaster, a terminally ill teenager whose thyroid cancer has spread to her lungs. To please her she attends a local support group in ‘the literal heart of Jesus’, where she meets the charming Augustus Waters, who had lost part of his leg to osteosarcoma. Hazel doesn’t want to have a relationship with Augustus at first stating that she’s a grenade, but the inevitable happened and they shared a kissed in the Anne Frank house. Though they both acknowledge the painful realisation that their days together are numbered, they refuse to be defined by the disease. This is a beautiful movie about adolescents forced to make every moment count.

I am by far one of the biggest fans of the Fault in Our Stars in my group of friends. At every sad part of the movie my friends turned and looked at me. They all expected me to ball my eyes out and they were right. At the end of the movie one of my friends came and gave me a big comfortable hug. She later said to me, “I was worried, you were violently sobbing’. All of my friends thought that I was crying because Augustus had died, but honestly I did let a few tears slip due to his death, but at the end I cried so much because this book and movie really opened my eyes. Anna, Van Houten's daughter, which he said died of cancer at eight years of age, was a big tear jerker for me. At the end of the movie I cried because my sister is eight years old and I was so grateful that my sister, mum and I don’t have cancer. I also cried because of the unfairness of cancer, but no one ever said life is fair. I’m not a very religious person, so I won’t call it praying, but after the movie I found myself hoping for the best of all cancer patients. After watching the movie of the Fault in Our Stars I felt a mixture of gratefulness and sadness.

The Fault in Our Stars has been giving nothing but positive vibes to its fans, with the trailer being one of the most liked videos on YouTube. A lot of the dialogue is word-for-word from the novel. My friends and I found that we were mouthing the words to our favourite quotes. I’ve never seen a more faithful book-to-film adaptation. The dialogue that isn’t directly taken from the book remains true to the characters. Some story is trimmed and condensed, but hardly anything is cut altogether. In my review of the book I have already stated that some of the speech is very farfetched for teenagers and I still stand by that statement, but Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley make it look so natural. Some of Hazel’s narration is turned into voiceovers so that her inner observations about cancer aren’t lost. Though, Isaac’s story is a little more light-hearted in the film than in the book. The whole cast are amazing and portray their characters so well. Nat Wolff also brought so much humour. His acting in the trophy breaking scene and in the egging scene made me laugh so hard. (Also Nat Wolff followed me on Instagram once, but his account got hacked and now he has a different accountL) Laura Dern and Sam Trammell were wonderful as Hazel’s parents. Sometimes in movies and books the parents seem to disappear, but in this story the parents are very involved. I was particularly anticipated to see the scene where Hazel’s mum says she’s not a mum any more. It was a very short scene, but I love it. My favourite quote from the movie is “See we may not like much. But between the 3 of us we have 5 legs, 4 eyes, 2 1/2 working pairs of lungs, and 2 dozen eggs.” That quote wasn’t in the book, but it was only in movie, but I’m so glad they included it. I'm still so shocked that the movie is so much like the book.