Me and Earl and the Dying Girl doesn’t exactly start off on an advantageous footing in terms of expectations. It has a clunkily long title that suggests twee quirkiness of the sort that always goes down a storm at Sundance (as, indeed, this did) but doesn’t always work out with that environment. And the premise suggests a wannabe Fault in Our Stars by way of Jason Reitman’s Juno. But look beyond the surface and there’s a really quite special film here about the meaning of friendship and, as sickly sweet as it may sound, what it means to truly care for someone that you might not have expected to.
The film focuses on Greg (Thomas Mann), the Me of the title, an easy-going high schooler who spends most of his time making “sweded” parodies of classic movies – The 400 Bros, Anatomy of a Burger etc. – with his friend Earl (newcomer RJ Cyler). That is when he’s not doing his utmost to be generally friendly with everyone in the school so as to never be picked on. But one day his outlook changes forever when at the explicit request of his tough but caring mother (Connie Britton) reluctantly befriends Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a fellow classmate who has just been diagnosed with cancer.
This is a smart, funny and moving film in equal measure. The sly, deft script by Jesse Andrews (adapted from his own book) is as full of knowing humour about classic European cinema or our expectations of the plot via a self-aware voice-over (but not so much that it becomes smug) as much as it is touching moments of truth about mortality as told from the teenage perspective. What does it mean when someone who’s not even left school behind is staring death in the face? And more specifically what does that mean for those who have grown to care about them? The film poses these questions in a way that’s grown up and forthright while still being relatable to those who are, and once were, the age of the main characters.
It’s got lovely performances at the heart of it. Mann plays Gregg with all the amiable likeability of an ‘80s John Hughes character; if this movie had been made back then he would have been played by John Cusack or Matthew Broderick. Although he’s not in it as much as the title might suggests, Cyler as best friend Earl provides the sparky, outlandish yin to Mann’s more laid-back yang. Then there’s Cooke, who injects a real sense of humanity and authenticity to a potentially trite Manic Pixie Dream Girl character.
There have been complaints that the film is too much about Greg while the so-called Dying Girl and particularly Earl are afterthoughts in comparison. I don’t agree. It’s living up to the title in so far as Me takes first place and, indeed, centre stage. Not that it ignores how terrible the disease is on the girl who gets it, becoming the object of obligated sympathy from everyone around her, but the film is primarily about how it relates to Gregg. It almost acts as a cinematic coping mechanism told through the prism of the helpless on-looker. And while it’s not as much of an outright weepy as something like The Fault In Our Stars, it still packs a commendable emotional punch.
Directed with real visual flourish by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (The Town That Dreaded Sundown remake) in a way that seems to tip its hat to the perfectionist stylings of Wes Anderson and set to a beautiful score by Brian Eno and Nico Muhly, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is the epitome of the “more than meets the eye” teen movie. It has just enough quirky touches to give it personality while at the same time sidestepping the potential idiosyncratic trappings that drag down other films of this ilk. It has a real feeling of warmth and sincerity that’s very appealing and a sharp sense of wit to get its points across.