Alan Dee’s film preview: The kid’s aren’t all right, but Kev’s flexing his muscles

This week’s big new release is a boy meets girl story with a tearjerking twist – the twee twosome fall for each other at a cancer support group, so you know the changes of happy ever after are somewhat slim.

The Fault In Our Stars, something of a Love Story for the Twilight generation, is based on a staggeringly successful ‘young fiction’ novel by John Green and, apart from stretching a simple story over two hours, has much to recommend it.

Shailene Woodley, best known as one of George Clooney’s daughters in The Descendants, is the 16-year-old saddled with an oxygen tank and no illusions, while Ansel Agort – pretty much a new face, although both had roles in the recent dystopian teen drama Divergent – is the fellow-sufferer who catches her eye. Willem Dafoe and Laura Dern lend grown-up support in a clear-eyed tale that’s sure to spark tears galore in the stalls.

With the recent surge of stars with senior citizen status flexing their muscles in geriaction adventures, who can deny increasingly creased Kevin Costner the chance to do a Liam Neeson? After all, Kev’s not even 60 yet!

A word of warning, though – 3 Days To Kill is directed by the preposterous McG and it’s billed as a high-octane thriller, so take your earplugs and check your brain at the door.

The story is standard guff about a spy who wants out but is forced to take on one last mission while babysitting his teenager daughter. In Paris. Did someone say sounds like Taken? Well, Luc Besson cranked out the story, so what do you think?