To paraphrase Hazel’s maxim on infinities: Some atrocities are bigger than other atrocities.
Time’s Richard Corliss notes that Woodley “has the gift of acting internally: she makes you watch her watch something, lets you read the mind of her character like a good book,” while Elgort “has a natural screen appeal and suave chemistry with Woodley.” But an “egregious scene” in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is “where a Jewish girl’s descent into the Holocaust is straight-facedly compared to a teen’s cancer. There’s not a lot of easy ebb-and-flow on screen here points are made, obstacles are met, or not, and there’s too much dead air around the dialogue exchanges.”
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune writes that Fault is “discreetly assaultive” on viewers’ tear ducts, and that “Woodley’s direct, open, emotionally plangent acting is a full step or two above that of co-star Elgort.” On the other hand, “Boone’s technique, not helped by the editing, is prone to clunky reaction shots of young people in love and smiling at each other. Hazel and Gus possess an absolute moral authority, an ability to assert the truth of their experience that few can share and many might covet.… The loudest weeping you hear - including your own - may arise not from grief or admiration, but from envy.” It succeeds,” adding that Woodley’s “un-self-conscious performance is the perfect mirror of her character’s pragmatic temperament,” while author Peter Van Houten is “played with fine, unshaven, whiskey-soaked misanthropy by Willem Dafoe.” He observes that the love story “is also a perfect and irresistible fantasy. Scott warns that “the movie, like the book before it, is an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears … the film sets out to make you weep - not just sniffle or choke up a little, but sob until your nose runs and your face turns blotchy. VIDEO: How Nat Wolff Balances Blindness, Comedy and Raw Eggs in ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ Of the cast, “Woodley’s wise and accomplished take on Hazel Lancaster will resonate with those inclined to view the world with a somewhat skeptical point of view,” and “by dint of ample charm and considerable insight, Elgort’s Gus represents more than a foil for Hazel’s self-doubt – he offers her the opportunity to mold all of her hope and frustration into a fully three-dimensional, transcendent emotional experience, whether she wants to call that ‘love’ or not.” Playing Hazel’s parents, “Dern and Trammell display a realistic degree of concern without completely smothering her, and when crisis erupts, their instinctual compassion quickly restores calm,” while Wolff “provides some suitably dark humor.” He also notes “Boone’s appropriately light touch emphasizes the underlying literary material, foregrounding the performances with occasional underplayed visual humor and reserving stylistic nuance for more contemplative scenes, attractively framed by cinematographer Ben Richardson.” Weber for preserving Green’s literate tone. Their relationship is all the more miraculous given that Hazel's other constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, and they met and fell in love at a cancer support. The Hollywood Reporter’s film critic Justin Lowe says in his review that “the greatest strengths of the film clearly come from Green’s novel, which resolutely refuses to become a cliched cancer drama, creating instead two vibrant, believable young characters filled with humor and intelligence, both facing complex questions and issues unimaginable even to people twice their age,” and praises screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Hazel and Gus are two teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. 'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.Read what top critics are saying about The Fault in Our Stars: And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. 'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.' “Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard.