It's really about living and loving, not dying.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Grade: A
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (The Town That Dreaded Sundown)
Screenplay: Jesse Andrews (from his novel)
Cast: Thomas Mann (Welcome to Me), Olivia Cooke (Ouija)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 105 min.
by John DeSando
"I have no idea how to tell this story," Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann)
Yes, indeed, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is about a self-conscious teen, Greg, and his budding friendship with a girl, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), just diagnosed with leukemia. Seems like a clichéd melodrama ready to demand tears. But it’s not. It’s a smart, sweet coming-of-age story about outsiders who have the creative energy to survive. No maudlin tears, thankfully. Not surprisingly, Sundance audience and Grand Jury awards came to this film in 2015.
Greg and buddy, Earl (RJ Cyler), have made 41 parody movies with titles like A Sockwork Orange and 2:48 PM Cowboy. This eccentricity alone wins my heart, but add to that their care of dying classmate Rachel, with words and ideas as off the wall as they are, and all of it is balm for her. The ingenious language is funny and poignant while she enjoys the boys and almost forgets she’s may be on her way out. It’s a long way from Risky Business in 1983 but not so long if you see that freedom is what teens want.
Greg’s seemingly non-chalant attitude doesn’t for too long disguise a warm heart and is a revelation about how to survive intense high school years. Yet, peers aren’t the only ones to be reckoned with because parents can be predatory, weird, demanding, or just simply out of it. Greg handles them with an insouciance to be admired.
Although Greg and Rachel get closer as friends, she is losing her will to fight. That Greg resents her withdrawal is one of the signs he is maturing while finding reasons to live an active life. Me and Earl may remind you of Juno or The Fault in Our Stars, and somewhat the documentary, The Wolfpack, where the Angulo siblings survive familial imprisonment in a Manhattan apartment by recreating scenes from movies like Reservoir Dogs. These teens find solace in their world of movies. I have no complaint.
Through most of this engaging film, it’s never clear if Rachel will make it. That’s not the point, anyway. Surviving with imagination and engaging with others becomes the mantra for happiness regardless of whether or not death is at the door.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
