Shailene Woodley and Brie Larson Are Out to Conquer Hollywood-and Fix ItĮlgort isn’t so convincing, though few other actors could pull off a part this phony-and don’t say, “But I love Augustus,” because I do, too, much as I love Casper the Friendly Ghost. I know it’s the way of all saps to believe that actors are as warm and true in life as they are onscreen, but if I ever heard that Woodley were an insufferable diva, I’m not sure I could handle it. Woodley has a face that can look plain in repose and startlingly beautiful in motion, when her delicate pink skin becomes near translucent. The film does, however, have the best weapon in the world against the perception of slickness: an actress without a smidgen of actressiness. Hazel and Augustus trade quips (“I love it when you talk medical to me”) and do all sorts of goofy things, but just when you’re lulled into believing you’re watching a romantic comedy, you get slapped into silence by the return of the Big C. Weber of (500) Days of Summer, and packed with soon-to-be hits by Ed Sheeran and others, The Fault in Our Stars is engineered to wriggle around your defenses. As directed by Josh Boone, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Sincerely, Lloyd Dobler.) What’s being peddled as the raw truth is pretty slick. But something rubbed me wrong about the opening voice-over, in which Hazel warns that the story she’s about to tell won’t be like one of those movies where everything gets solved with “a Peter Gabriel song.” (Dear Hazel: Eat me. There were times I felt a tingling in my tear ducts and almost let loose. (And they say critics spoil movies.) They’ll probably sob at the film, too-although for pure, concentrated pathos, it’s hard to beat that trailer. I know people who wept watching the trailer, which features the first and last lines and gives away nearly everything else.

Although Hazel and Augustus speculate about God and heaven, it’s no surprise where that point is finally found: in the infinity that is their love. He falls for Hazel on sight and-in his witty, winsome way-fights against her nihilism. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (Shailene Woodley) projects her own mortality onto the world: Humans will perish, she says, and no one will remember Mozart, let alone someone like her-so what’s the point? Enter handsome high-school ex–basketball star Augustus (Ansel Elgort), who lost part of one leg but is now in remission.

In the exquisitely tasteful adaptation of John Green’s romantic cancer book The Fault in Our Stars, two mortally ill teens struggle to identify something in their fleeting existence that will endure.

Photo: James Bridges/Twentieth Century Fox

The fault in our stars movie trailer 2