Movie Adaptation: The Fault in Our Stars

    *sigh of relief*

    I am so highly pleased with this movie. As occurs with anyone who has been horribly scarred by the Divergent or Percy Jackson film adaptations, I was a tad nervous to see how Hazel and Gus' epic love story would translate to the screen. But have no fear, because it was excellent!

1. The Characters

    I have to admit that even though I knew prior to reading the book that Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort play Hazel and Gus in the movie version, my brain still didn't know quite what to do when the actors didn't look like my own mental image of them. I guess I'd been picturing Hazel as sort of looking like me with darker brown hair and Gus as... like a really buff blond guy??? *insert the laughing emoji*

    On a deeper level, though, I did find Gus coming off arrogant in certain scenes of the movie whereas I didn't see that at all when I read the book. The prefuneral scene especially seemed off, but maybe that's just because a prefuneral would likely be considered a tad arrogant if it happened in real life. *shrugs* Other than that, I thought Shailene and Ansel did a great job and brought this tragic, wonderful story to the screen in a satisfactory way.

2. The Changes and the Not Changes

    I will never cease to be frustrated with random, pretty much useless changes in movie adaptations of books. For example, take Hazel's dress in Amsterdam. It was supposed to be blue and flowery and preowned by Hazel Grace herself, but in the movie her mom just randomly bought it for her. Also, Augustus was just suddenly 18 instead of 17. Why???

    There were other changes too, because I distinctly remember thinking, "I should write down that (insert x, y, x change here) was different so I can write about it in my blog post", and then proceeding to sit there and not listen to myself.

    Another thing that should be mentioned is the title itself. If I hadn't read the book first, I wouldn't understand the title at all, which I suppose is not a gigantic issue. I just thought I'd point it out.

    What I did appreciate were the things that stayed the same, like Hazel's "this is not a pipe" shirt, as well as all the lines I recognized from the book. Using actual lines from the book is, in my opinion and in the opinions of most people who read, the best way to make a movie based on a book. (Shocker, I know.)

    At the end of the day, I'm impressed. If you're looking to read a book and then watch a movie about it that won't make you want to break basketball trophies, this is an excellent option.

Rating: 5/5