Well, the Drum Goddess and I saw The Fault in Our Stars this afternoon and quite enjoyed it. Shailene Woodley did a nice job carrying this movie. It was an awful lot of movie to put on such young shoulders. Her costar, Ansel Elgort, couldn’t quite keep up. The plot twist became obvious about thirty minutes before it was revealed, but it was still okay.
So, what do my fellow Dopers think of this movie?
TheKid saw it Friday. When I picked her up, I asked how was it? She burst into tears, saying it was a fantastic movie. She cried/laughed the whole way home. She has a friend who is on her third round of chemo for damned lukemia that won’t go away, plus she’s lost a few close family members to cancer - which (to her) made the movie more personal.
I took my 11 & 14 year old daughters plus a friend to see it this weekend. I saw Godzilla instead, which finished 10 minutes earlier. It seemed that hundreds of crying teenagers burst from the theater when it was over.
Yeah, judging from the reactions of teenagers in the audience when we saw it, it definitely hit the right notes for them.
Being a middle school and high school teacher, I know and have known thousands of teenagers. The reactions of the two lead characters in the movie rang true to me. While I have had a few students die over the years, I have not had a student deal with the imminent and near-certain death that these two young people experienced, they did seem realistic to me. Teenagers handle traumatic situations quite differently than adults. If the two characters in the movie were five or ten years older, I don’t think the movie would have been at all realistic, but for seventeen and eighteen years old, I think they were pretty accurate.
Well, I don’t think I’ve ever started a thread about a movie before, so I’m a bit disappointed. Either the movie is too juvenile for the sophisticated SDMB crowd or I failed to provide a provocative question to stimulate the conversation.
So, here is a provocative *and *juvenile question in the hopes of kicking off a conversation.
Mild spoiler ahead:
Was Hazel a virgin at the start of the story? In one scene, Gus confides to Hazel that he is a virgin. She expresses surprise, but does not offer any information on her status. Seems to me that that would be a natural progression of such a conversation.
So, was Hazel a virgin? Why do you think so? (I have not read the book. Maybe this issue is resolved in the book.)
I saw the trailer for this at the theater about a month ago. My first thought was," boy, that couple look too much like brother and sister." and then it just put me off the more the commercials started to air on TV for the movie. I think they did play brother and sister in something before which is creepy.
I’m pretty sure my 15 yo daughter isnt interested in seeing it.
Honestly, I don’t care whether she is or not - nor do I see what difference it makes - but Hazel’s been dying of cancer since she was 13 and not physically in school in that time. I also don’t care whether Gus is and I don’t remember whether this was even addressed in the book.
I saw the movie Friday with my book group, which read the novel sometime last year. The movie was very true to the book, IMO and in a number of ways sadder (the Anne Frank House scene hit me far harder in the movie than in the book).
The theater had mostly teenage girls in it and the movie absolutely punched them all right in the feels. To the point that I almost got the giggles at one point.
I have not seen it but my 12-year-old daughter read the book at least once and saw it with her mom last night. She really liked it and at breakfast this morning mentioned one character called another a douche-something as an insult so I got to explain what a douche is to my 6-year-old. Thank you John Green.
My daughter gave me the book last month for my birthday because she wants to see the film with me when it comes out here. I devoured it in a day and broke down several times. I’m packing the tissues and the waterproof mascara for the movie.
One thing that I’ve been chewing on in the back of my mind since I read the book is Hazel’s reflecting on how many people write things like ‘You’ll live forever in our hearts’ on the Facebook pages of those who have died. I hadn’t thought about it before this, but really? Forever? Because those people who are writing that are never going to die themselves? The book felt very realistic in what it is like to live with a terminal disease and what it is like from a teenager’s perspective. I’m looking forward to seeing how the movie handles that.
Read the book, haven’t seen the movie.
The book isn’t perfect, but I’d much rather see teenage girls losing their minds over material like this instead of sparkly vampires whose stalking is masqueraded as “true love.”
I have read the book.
Hazel is definitely a virgin at the start of both the book and the movie. She is diagnosed at 13, gets a GED so she doesn’t have to go to high school, and while she takes classes at the local community college, she doesn’t have very many friends (in fact, her only friend at the beginning of the book is Isaac, the soon-to-be blind kid in support group). The lack of friends is the main reason her parents are pushing her to go to support group, because otherwise she mopes around at home all day by herself and they want her to have some semblance of a normal life.
Hazel’s surprised at Gus’ virginity because he’s an attractive, confident, 18 year old that still attends high school, was a star athlete, and outside of a slight limp nobody would know he had cancer, since he always wears long pants. And since Hazel watches a lot of soaps at home, she probably has a skewed idea of when most people lose their virginity. She assumes she hasn’t because she’s lugging around an oxygen cylinder (what a turn on!) and has the typical teenage girl “there’s no way I’m pretty”, even when by word-of-god she is very pretty for her age.
book spoilers below, that aren’t in the movie:
Gus admits in the book that one of the reasons he’s still a virgin is that he did have a previous girlfriend, who also had cancer. And while cancer patients put on a strong face in front of strangers, they often become acerbic and angry and a huge pain to deal with as they die of cancer (not that I blame them). Since dumping your cancer ridden significant other is socially unacceptable (see Isaac and Monica and the egg throwing scene) Gus couldn’t leave the girl even as she made his life hell. He’s just getting over that girl as he asks out Hazel, but as Isaac relates in private, he’s still a bit messed up over the last girl, who he would not have had sex with but also would not have cheated on.
Did the twelve year old also use “fuck” and “shit” and “asshole”? Because all those words are also used in the movie. I don’t see how you can blame John Green for your daughter repeating something that is obviously an insult in front of your six year old.