Review: Shailene Woodley elevates 'The Fault in Our Stars'

• Critic%27s review%3A 3.5 stars
• The film is based on John Green%27s popular young-adult novel
• Ansel Elgort%2C who plays Gus the love interest%2C comes around%2C after a shaky start
• Woodley is reason enough to watch

"The Fault in Our Stars" is manipulative as can be, pulling out all the stops — kids with cancer — in its attempt to bring the tears.

And you know what? It works. If you don't cry or snort or at least tear up a little at some point during Josh Boone's film version of the popular young-adult novel by John Green, you're a pretty cold fish.

It's not because the writing is subtle or the direction nuanced, though. It's because Shailene Woodley is so good as the dying girl who hadn't planned on falling in love. She makes something more, something better out of a movie that would have appealed mostly to teenage girls arriving with tissue in hand.

Woodley plays Hazel Lancaster, 16, who has tumors in her lungs and has to lug around a portable oxygen tank. Her mother, Frannie (Laura Dern, very good), insists that she try a support group, which is led by a guy with a guitar who made his own rug with a portrait of Christ, so that he can say they're meeting in the literal heart of Jesus. (Mike Birbiglia is funny in the role, a small performance that strikes a nice balance between cynicism and genuine belief.)

There, she meets Gus (Ansel Elgort), a cancer survivor with a prosthetic leg and an incredibly optimistic attitude. He holds a cigarette between his teeth but never lights it, because to him it's a symbol of holding in his mouth the thing that could kill him, but not letting it.

Yes, that's about the level of philosophizing on display here. And it takes awhile to warm up to Elgort, and thus Gus. His confidence comes off as cocky at first, like he's trying to convince himself that he's going to make the most of his second chance. And who knows, maybe it is.

Whatever the case, Hazel is smitten and they embark upon a unique romance. Much of the film is built around Hazel's love for a book about a dying girl, written by a reclusive writer (Willem Dafoe). That part of the story doesn't really justify the time spent on it.

But watching Woodley does. (Elgort comes around in the end, too.) She is captivating. It would be easy to play Hazel in maudlin fashion, and judging from the rest of the film, Boone wouldn't have minded. But Woodley brings genuine emotion to what is sometimes overwritten teen-dream dialogue.

Her Hazel knows who she is, and what's going to happen. (There is a powerful moment when she insists on correcting her mother to say not "if" she is going to die, but "when.") And yet here she is experiencing something new, a change in direction she couldn't have expected.

Woodley makes the most of that detour. Her performance above all is what's worth watching here. And if it means shedding a few tears along the way, that's a fair price to pay.

'The Fault in Our Stars'

• Rating: 3.5 stars

• Cast: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern.

• Director: Josh Boone.

• Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, some sexuality and brief strong language.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.