(“LOVE STORY for Teenagers”)

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS takes its title from Shakespeare’s JULIUS CAESAR and not ROMEO AND JULIET, which would be more appropriate, except that this movie comes nowhere near the quality of any Shakespeare work.

In fact, the movie is based on the highly successful novel for young adults by John Green, and keep that in mind if you are any sort of adult other than the “young” kind.

Otherwise, you might be sucked into the story that you have seen many times before and think “Been there, seen that, took out my hanky.”

Shailene Woodley stars as Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is 17 years old and has thyroid cancer, which causes her to wheel around an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes.

However, don’t feel sorry for Hazel, because she certainly doesn’t, and in her narration she says, “Depression is not a side effect of cancer; it’s a side effect of dying.”

We learn that Hazel takes eight prescription drugs three times a day and that support groups are not her “thing,” although she is persuaded to attend one for other teenagers with cancer, because the reason she does anything these days is to make her parents happy.

Hazel’s mother is Frannie, played by Laura Dern.

At the first group meeting, Hazel meets Augustus Waters, played by Ansel Elgort, who takes an immediate interest in Hazel and flirts with her.

Gus used to be a basketball star before he lost his leg to osteosarcoma, and he makes jokes about everything, claiming that he is at group meetings only in support of his best friend, Isaac, who lost an eye to cancer and is in danger of losing his remaining eye.

Hazel and Gus become close friends, avoiding any talk of love, and they exchange their favorite books for the other to read, Hazel’s being AN IMPERIAL AFFLICTION, about a girl with cancer that ends infuriatingly in the middle of a sentence.

Then Gus helps Hazel get a response from the author, Peter Van Houten, an American now living in Amsterdam and played by Willem Dafoe, who responds that if Hazel is ever in Amsterdam to look him up.

And then here come the surprises, right and left, and then the tragedies, up and down.

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is just a LOVE STORY for teenagers.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”