There are few film genres as manipulative as the "cancer romancer." Unleashed on the world with 1970's mega-smash Love Story, starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw as a pair of star-crossed Harvardians whose nascent marriage is decimated by her terminal leukemia, this genre later flourished throughout the 2000s, with saccharine releases like Here on Earth, Sweet November, A Walk to Remember, P.S. I Love You, The Fault in Our Starsand Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.