The people behind The Fault in Our Stars take great pains to make it clear that this is not going to be that kind of movie. We are warned about the clichés of the cancer film, and how this is definitely not that. I can’t say this movie really avoids all those conventions, but it creates enough unusual detours to justify its existence. Based on a bestselling novel by John Green, the film takes a couple of ailing teenagers and puts them in an offbeat love story.
Hazel Grace Lancaster is 17 and an unlikely survivor of an aggressive form of cancer. She’s on an experimental drug that has extended her life — for how long, nobody knows — but also makes it difficult for her to breathe without her oxygen machine.