One of the annoyances of being the type of person who’s really into movies is when other people ask you about the newest action movie, or the newest teen comedy, or whatever type of movie Hollywood constantly churns out new versions of—and they’ve clearly seen the movie and are excited about it—and then you have to break it to them that you didn’t like it very much. People take it personal. They tell you you’re a snob. They tell you that you go into movies wanting to hate them. Then you think back to the latest indie or foreign or whatever kind of alternative movie that you recently saw at a little arthouse that really affected you—that too few people are ever going to see—and how much more interesting, or thoughtfully made, or just plain better it is than whatever generic product they’re praising, and you want to tell them that you don’t go into every movie wanting to hate it, they just don’t see enough movies to know what’s actually good; but you don’t say that, because you want to be polite, even though people aren’t polite to you when you disagree with them. Well, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is that interesting, affecting, more thoughtfully made movie that too few people are going to see that you’re going to be thinking about the next time someone is pissed that you didn’t like the Pretty in Pink remake, or whatever is next on Hollywood’s agenda.
From a Jesse Andrews novel that he himself adapted into a screenplay, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl tells the story of Greg (Thomas Mann), a closed-off teenager who has decided to navigate the pitfalls of the high school social structure by opting out of it entirely, Earl (RJ Cyler), the childhood friend Greg calls a “co-worker” because they make cheesy parodies of classic cinema together, and Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the “dying girl” who Greg’s mom (Connie Britton) forces him to spend time with and be nice to after she’s diagnosed with cancer. If this development seems to you to be destined to break down the walls that Greg puts up between himself and others, you’re not wrong, but the great thing about this movie is that it doesn’t take the usual path to get to that point that you’d expect it would, and once it gets there it doesn’t hit the usual emotional beats that stories about death always do.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl isn’t a movie about teen romance. It’s not even a nostalgic look at a transformative childhood friendship, or a weepy drama about mortality. Instead, the main thing that it’s looking at is the self-centered nature of being a teenager, and how just completely narcissistic and without empathy we all are at that age. This is a movie that has a young girl who’s dying of a terminal illness at its center, but it’s not even her story that we’re being told. Instead, we’re looking at things from the perspective of the kid sitting next to her who has relatively few problems in his life and whose plight shouldn’t play out as being very dramatic. For most movies, to tell things from the perspective of Greg and not Rachel would mean there’s a huge problem with the script, but this film knows exactly what its doing by telling things through Greg’s point of view. It’s a meditation on how lost we can get in our own heads, and how every personal struggle, no matter how small, seems like the most difficult one in the world if you’re the one experiencing it. Greg isn’t a bad guy, he’s just mixed up and young and stupid, and that keeps him at arm’s length from the people around him. It’s a rut we’ve all found ourselves in at some point.
Because this movie isn’t a teen romance and because it’s not really a cancer drama, it’s able to avoid a lot of the overblown melodrama that often sinks similar stories. The relationships here aren’t movie relationships that follow standard arcs where two characters meet cute, come together, split apart during a crucial moment, and then come back together just in time for things to climax. Greg and Rachel’s relationship is messy and confusing, an every day navigation of what the other person is thinking and feeling and why. They never fully come together, and they’re usually more concerned with their own problems than they are the status of their relationship, or lack thereof. Greg’s friendship with Earl is similarly unconventional for a movie about teenagers. Earl isn’t a sassy sidekick, or a more confident rival, or whatever other character archetype you’d expect would be here to lend the story additional comedy or drama. He’s this story’s rock, the grounding influence that’s constantly striving to pull Greg out of himself and force him back into the real world. He’s a stone Buddha while all of the other characters are in flux or in turmoil. Me and Early and the Dying girl subverts tropes and avoids clichéd story beats, but it’s still able to find a story worth telling in its characters, and because the characters feel so real, the drama becomes all the more affecting as a result.
Of course, a big part of why everything works so well is that the cast is really talented. Mann is very relatable in a put-upon, everyman way, and he’s believable when emoting on screen. This is important, because Greg, as a character, does a lot of emoting, and he could have come off as being an insufferable wimp rather than being charmingly adolescent if he was played by the wrong actor. Cooke has a rare magnetism and such a natural sweetness to her that watching her put through the slightest bit of pain and discomfort is a traumatic experience. I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for the dying girl. Molly Shannon also shows up as Rachel’s mom, and is outstanding playing to her strengths as a ridiculous, alcoholic cougar. She’s hilarious, but she brings a real air of melancholy to the role, which grounds her absurd behavior. Cyler probably steals the movie out from under everyone though. He’s able to do so much while being understated that it makes one giddy to think about what else he might have in his repertoire.
Overall, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is just a really refreshing, unapologetically smart movie about young people. It might be one of the best ever, and it certainly joins movies like The Spectacular Now and Short Term 12 as the best we’ve gotten in recent years. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon picked a great script, he assembled a great cast, and he put a lot of thought into how everything was presented. There isn’t a frame in this movie that doesn’t appear to be very carefully considered, which puts it in stark contrast to most of the big studio movies out there that contain so many edits you barely ever even get a chance to realize what you’re looking at. This is a guy whose only previous feature credit is the The Town That Dreaded Sundown remake that came out last year that I don’t remember anyone watching. Maybe we should check it out? Just because something’s a Hollywood remake doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be bad, after all.
