15 Unexpectedly Awesome 2014 Movies Everyone Thought Would Suck

6. The Fault In Our Stars

Why It Should Have Sucked: Yet another Young Adult weepie adaptation in the vein of Nicholas Sparks' increasingly tiresome line of emotionally manipulative dramas for 14-year-old girls, no doubt squandering the wonderfully talented Shailene Woodley in the process. Why It Was Awesome: An illness-of-the-week movie with a difference, The Fault In Our Stars is much closer to something like Jonathan Levine's 50/50 than it is a Sparks adaptation. Not only does the screenplay intentionally draw attention to and subvert many of the clichés associated with movies such as this, it perfectly conveys just how lonely a grim diagnosis can be, and how few people will ever truly understand what it feels like. Woodley and love interest Ansel Elgort are a couple easy to root for, and the movie never has to force this point home as so many similarly-premised films do. There's also some fine supporting work here from Laura Dern as Woodley's mother, and Willem Dafoe as a cantankerous author of Woodley's character's favourite book. It's slightly too long and arrives at an inevitably tear-jerking finale, but the tears are largely well-earned, and this massively successful teen drama (grossing $304 million against a $12 million budget) is a great example of how to get the genre right.