ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
DIRECTOR: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
CAST: Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Nick Offerman, Connie Britten, Molly Shannon
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LD
RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes
RATING: 4 stars (out of 5)
Theresa Smith
WELL cast and with a sharp script, this charming film is sad, funny and beautifully affecting.
“Me” in the title is Greg (Mann), a high school senior who divides his time between making cynical films with his friend Earl (Cyler), and not offending anyone. A misfit who is unsure of himself, Greg navigates high school by befriending everyone superficially, but not being part of any one clique.
When he rekindles a childhood friendship with a schoolmate who has leukemia, Greg finds himself changing in ways he never thought to explore because he finally commits to a relationship.
Before he steps back into Rachel’s (Cooke) life, Greg can’t even acknowledge that Earl is his friend, introducing the other boy as a colleague because of their shared passion for making short films.
Earl, who understands his friend very well indeed, is the one who gives Rachel access to the short films and soon everyone hears that the two make films and someone comes up with the idea that they should make one for Rachel.
Narrated by Greg, the film is very much about his growth – and how he went from a student good enough to get early acceptance to university to literally not passing anything. It is also about the concept that after you die, people can still discover new things about you.
Director Gomez-Rejon avoids mawkish sentimentality while still tugging at your heartstrings. He avoids cliches of speech and behaviour, but still creates some interesting characters in the background to Greg’s self-aware, big-hearted teenager who is trying to figure out his identity.
Quirky posters, well-chosen musical tracks and overhead shots point to rich internal lives we are not necessarily privy too, as do the occasional well-chosen “lecturings” impinging on Greg’s consciousness.
This being a story told from a teenager’s perspective, it is very much about Greg’s feelings and how, as he is forced to confront this idea of death, he learns more about life.
Cooke has the more difficult role as the dying girl with less screen time, creating an ordinary girl who isn’t just a romantic foil for Greg, or the pixie girl who sparks the movie hero on to greater things. She is a teenager forced to confront her own mortality.
Don’t go into this one expecting miracles and a sappy ending; this is entertainment of the sardonically skewed variety. There is whimsy, but also a grounded realism in the idea that life is a journey and not always a smooth one.
If you liked The Fault in Our Stars or Be Kind Rewind, you will like this.