Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Review
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
If y'all grew upward, as I did, watching old blackness-and-white movies on a local television channel, then you know the experience of learning immature that at that place is a whole world of movies exterior the ones shown at the multiplex. "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl," the baffling Sundance hit (it won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize), directed past Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, with a script by Jesse Andrews, based on his acknowledged novel, features two teenage characters obsessed with the Great Movies. Other than that acquisitive movie-mad mindset, information technology is a pandering, self-flattering mess, featuring unearned catharsis, lazy clichés and characters presented in broad, sometimes-offensive stereotypes.
The worst part is that "Me and Earl" believes it is aware of all of this. Every cliché arrives with a wink of cocky-knowing commentary earlier it, to say, "Yes, we know this is a cliche, but we are making a comment about the platitude!" Saying it don't make it so. Besides, such commentary has been done before, and information technology's been done much improve. At that place'south a laziness at work in "Me and Earl," a reliance on well-trod footing and over-chewed cultural tropes, and possibly information technology is supposed to be that style (these are kids who come across everything through the lens of their movie-watching), but it nonetheless doesn't work. The winks about the clichés, including the one in the title, only serve to betoken upwardly how tired those clichés are.
Greg (Thomas Isle of man) is a detached and depressive teenager, who resists emotional involvement to such a degree that he tin't fifty-fifty admit that his best friend since babyhood, Earl (RJ Cyler), is his best friend. He refers to Earl, instead, as a "co-worker." He and Earl grew upward watching movies like Werner Herzog's "Aguirre The Wrath of God", Truffaut'south "The 400 Blows," Powell and Pressberger'due south "Tales of Hoffmann," and spend their costless time as teenagers making their own movies, spoofs of the greats with titles similar "The 400 Bros," "The Sockwork Orange," and "2:48 p.m. Cowboy." I day Greg's female parent (Connie Britton) orders him to go visit Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a classmate just diagnosed with cancer. Greg does not even know Rachel, but he shows upwards at her house, and is immediately lusted over by Rachel's boozy mother (Molly Shannon), who answers the door with a drinkable in her hand, cooing about who is this "delicious," "yummy" boyfriend. Rachel is confused as to why Greg is there, annoyed even, and Greg begs to be allowed to hang out with her, merely for one day, then he can report dorsum to his mother.
Considering of course, information technology is a dying daughter's responsibility to make the earth okay for everyone in her midst, to be inspirational, to teach people how to love, how to live—fifty-fifty strangers who show up at her door on a charity mission. At one bespeak he says, "Please appreciate how honest I just was." A valid reply to that argument would exist, "No. I'k dying. I don't know you. Get away."
The whole point of "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" is that through his relationship with Rachel, Greg starts to live for someone other than himself. He and Earl determine to make a movie for Rachel, a tribute, and they hurry to finish it earlier she dies. Teenagers are self-involved. Learning to live in the world, to recognize that others exist, that your actions have consequences, is a part of growing upward. Authors similar Paul Zindel, S.E. Hinton, and, more than recently, John Green, all wrote books featuring teenagers who have to learn, sometimes painfully, that who they are has meaning, that they have to exist responsible for themselves, and kind to others. "Me and Earl" wants to be a part of that genre without bothering to create characters that live.
Earl is another problem. Earl is black. For no other reason, plain, he lives in squalor on a terrifying-looking street of derelict houses, overrun past weeds, and has a scary aggressive brother with a pit bull. Earl speaks with profanity-laced linguistic communication, and constantly asks Greg about Rachel's "titties." Has Greg seen/touched the "titties" yet? Earl'due south linguistic communication is completely unmotivated, coming from nowhere, and therefore represents a failure of the imagination when it comes to the character. Who is Earl? I'd actually like to know. How does he feel about the films they lookout? What's his take? Afterwards, when Greg has injure Rachel'southward feelings, Earl steps up in a big fashion, showing that he has more common sense and more of an agreement of what is at stake for Rachel than Greg does. (This is also a cliche: the black sidekick agreement more than about matters of the centre than the white atomic number 82.)
Greg'southward friendship with Rachel, despite its inauspicious starting time, does develop. They hang out. They talk. Or, rather, Greg talks, and she listens. He shows her the movies he made with Earl. If you were a teenage girl dying of cancer, with a grouping of supportive friends already, a terrified mother, and a unique creative sensibility of your own (which we notice subsequently), how would you like to spend your terminal months on earth? In "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl," the "girl" of the title devotes the ending stretch of her life into making a young guy she never knew before experience good near himself and his artistic pursuits.
The glimpses we become of Earl and Greg's movies are the best part of the picture. They're goofy and dumb, and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon had a lot of fun, obviously, creating all of them. There are moments that flash with humor, like Greg filling out his college application in the voice of Werner Herzog. The camera-work is energetic, albeit a bit too bogus and showy (placing heads over on the side of the frame for no real reason). One scene, a tense argument between Rachel and Greg, plays out in one long accept and it's the only time in the film when something real is actually immune to exist, because in such a scene it is almost the behavior, the silences between the words, the sense you get that two actors are really creating something before your optics. Such a scene, still, cannot save the whole.
That line mentioned earlier, "Please appreciate how honest I only was," sums upwardly the systemic issues with "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl." The film wants to be congratulated for being honest. Merely it isn't honest at all.
Sheila O'Malley
Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Principal's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Plan. Read her answers to our Movie Beloved Questionnaire hither.
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
105 minutes
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