Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Nat Wolff, Willem Dafoe Director: Josh Boone

    Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort star in Josh Boone’s adaptation of John Green’s best-selling young adult novel.

    WITH interest in adapting John Green’s fourth novel for the big screen running high even before its 2012 debut atop The New York Times best-seller list, “Twilight” producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen managed to snatch up the film rights to the hugely popular narrative, which may have been a bit of a “be careful what you wish for” moment. With the book’s millions of adoring fans eagerly anticipating the movie’s release, a distinct risk of blow-back was practically built in to the project.

    Fortunately, director Josh Boone and his filmmaking team appear to have minimized the downside, in part by casting fast-rising star Shailene Woodley in the lead, along with her “Divergent” franchise co-star Ansel Elgort. Both are strong selling points with the film’s youth-skewing target audience, which is being further softened up by a robust marketing campaign and Green’s own substantial social media presence.

    If any teenager can reasonably be described as “ordinary,” then 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Woodley) is far from it. A cancer survivor since the age of 13, she’s fully in possession of both keen intelligence and sharp wit, if not her health — a challenging combination for a kid who could clearly do with a few more friends than she actually has. Instead, her most constant companions are the oxygen tank connected to the breathing tube that supports her seriously compromised lungs, along with her concerned mother, Frannie (Laura Dern), and protective father, Michael (Sam Trammell).

    Hazel gets a chance to branch out when, at the urging of both her mom and her doctor, she joins an often lame though occasionally amusing church-based cancer-survivor support group, where she meets 18-year-old Augustus “Gus” Waters (Elgort), an equally precocious teen with a rather more constructive outlook than Hazel’s. Despite losing a leg to cancer, his disease is in remission and he’s dreaming of new ways to conquer the world, along with his best friend Isaac (Nat Wolff), who’s battling the affliction as well. Irreverent rather than cynical, he freely shares that he intends to “live an extraordinary life” and bonds with Hazel over her favorite book, “An Imperial Affliction,” written by Dutch-American author Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), which just happens to be about living with cancer.

    Hazel is borderline obsessed with contacting the elusive Van Houten, but he never responds to her missives. So it’s a bit shocking and even overwhelming when the writer’s assistant replies to an email from Gus soliciting information about Van Houten’s book. Then Hazel gets a message from Van Houten himself, and the author invites her to visit if she’s ever in Amsterdam. Hazel and Gus, who often insists on calling her “Hazel Grace,” quickly cook up a plan to make the trip, but it’s nixed by Hazel’s doctors and parents, concerned that the stress of the journey will strain her lungs and disrupt the experimental cancer-drug treatment she’s dependent on for her survival.

    Meanwhile, Gus is falling hard for Hazel, who is fairly smitten herself, but as her condition worsens, she pulls back, telling Gus “I’m a grenade and one day I’m going to explode and obliterate everything in my wake.” Undeterred, he counters that her withdrawal doesn’t lessen his affection for her, and when he manages to find an unexpected method of funding their travel, the plan is back on again. As both teens face suddenly critical health issues, however, the outcome of both the trip and their increasingly romantic relationship becomes appreciably more uncertain.

    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. Turning the screenwriting over to adaptation experts Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber preserved the distinctly literate tone of the book, even if they do occasionally deliver scenes that feel overwrought.

    The script makes an excellent fit for Woodley, whose feature film career really took off with “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now,” two similarly smart, self-aware films. 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, although they may face similar resistance to the prospect of romance entering her life.

    The movie is now being screened in Hong Kong.

    (SD-Agencies)