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By Sandra Olmsted     

By definition, a weepie should make the audience’s eyes leak a lot, but sometimes the filmmakers go too far, and audience only gets red eyes and a runny nose with barely a hankie in sight. Eliciting a few sniffles and tears during a few crucial scenes equals moving drama, but wrenching a full blown bawl by making every scene about bilking the audience for tears results in a bad weepie. As a subset of the dramatic film, the best weepies offer the madding need for a hankie and those elusive other emotions. Director Josh Boone masters the form in A Fault in Our Stars.

Based on John Green’s best-selling novel of the same name, A Fault in Our Stars asks the audience to believe each and everyone of them would be as brave, even heroic, faced with being a teenager facing a slow, agonizing death or being a parent hoping for an elusive miracle while making the best of each good moment. One thing for sure, few can truly understanding the highs and lows of emotion inherent in the situation. Actors embodying that range of extreme emotions well doesn’t necessarily make a weepie great, but it certainly helps. For example, Terms of Endearment has great performances which provide the benchmark for the modern weepie acting, but that film manipulates the audience in the extreme, which set another benchmark — the boxes of tissues needed to get through the movie.

When Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) talks about a cancer narrative she’s obsessed with and about tropes, such as what happens to those “left behind” or “the last good day,” the book, cancer as a narrative, and eventually the author, Van Houten played by Willem Dafoe, become characters in the film. The cancer narrative as character in a cancer narrative makes for a nice, self-deprecating twist, mirroring the self-deprecating humor of the film and the main characters. Hazel and her best friend, Augustus “Gus” Waters (Ansel Elgort), share cancer and a sense of humor in facing lives diminished by it. They are also what most teenagers loath being, different. Hazel wears a breathing tube and drags an oxygen tank behind her all the time because cancer has destroyed her lungs, so even if she licks the cancer, the breathing problems will kill her. Gus lost his leg to cancer and won’t ever be the jock he once was, which seems a little trite considering the athletes who play sports with artificial limbs. Hazel and Gus fall in love, but Hazel’s obsession with what will happen to those she leaves behind make her hesitant to drag Gus into the emotional whirlpool of her life.

Although Hazel used her “cancer wish” for a trip to a Disney theme park when she was younger than her 16 years, she now wishes for Van Houten’s answers regarding what happens to those left behind when the character in his book dies. Fortunately, Gus has yet to use his wish and calls on the “Genies” to grant him, Hazel, and her mother a trip to Amsterdam and a meeting with the author, who agreed to answer Hazel’s questions. Hazel’s questions really reflect her concern for what will happen to her mother when she is “no longer a mom.” The trip also provides some real romance for Hazel and Gus. Perhaps the drunken, obnoxious Van Houten feeds Hazel’s deepest fears; however, Boone miraculously doesn’t beat the audience over the head with that theme and lets the audience work that out for themselves. While the trip to Amsterdam opens up the film and further develops the Hazel and Gus characters, Boone presents one creepy metaphor that goes a bit too far for this viewer. When Hazel, Gus, and Van Houten’s assistant visit the Anne Frank House, the comparison of cancer to the Holocaust may cross a line. For others, the analogy may ring true; maybe cancer is a terrible scourge that must be fought on all fronts. Like the definition of a good weepie, this decision is up to the individual viewer.

Woodley gives an intelligent, heartfelt performance and her character, as written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, provide great material for the actress to work with. Neustadter and Weber’s Gus provide Elgort less to work with. Being mid-transition between Gus the former Big Jock on Campus and Gus who must live by his wits and not just his looks makes Gus a difficult character to play, and kudos to Elgort for tackling this no-win proposition. Perhaps because Woodley and Elgort have performed together before in Divergent, they also have a sweet, realistic chemistry which makes the film much more watchable than most teen love stories. Laura Dern shines as Hazel’s mother, and Dern masters putting a smile on her character Frannie’s face despite the tears palpable below the surface, and Sam Trammell as Hazel’s father Michael has less to work with but manages to exude love and support for the wife and child he can’t really protect from the worst. Nat Wolff, who plays Gus’ best friend, Isaac, brings real emotion to his role as a handsome young man who has a harder time dealing with the loss of a hot girlfriend than his eye sight because one could change and the other must just be accepted, which makes for a nice thematic metaphor of it own.

If in need of a good cry, as my mother calls it, take a box and a half of tissues and sob through A Fault in Our Stars and ponder the bravery of these characters to love in the face of impending loss. Although this is a sanitized version of what cancer really looks like, the story is based on real people and events. A Fault in Our Stars is a Fox 2000 Pictures release and opens today in theaters; it is rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some sexuality and brief strong language, and runs 125 minutes. More of Olmsted’s reviews are available at <thecinematicskinny.com>.

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