Me and Earl and The Dying Girl

Review By: John Delia

Directed toward a teen audience, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl easily appeals to a female audience and should even charm males through their late twenties. The film features excellent performances by a familiar cast, gets able guidance from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and delivers an appealing screenplay by the original novelist Jesse Andrews. Working against last year’s tearjerker The Fault in our Stars, I found this film to be more realistic and less maudlin. Not a love story per se, but the bond between the two main characters that goes deep to the bone.

Greg (Thomas Mann) doesn’t care much for high shool cliques, but being in his senior year and with college in sight, his theory is to get “citizenship” in as many clubs as he can.  It’s his way of staying under the radar and stealthily completing his last year. His best pal Earl (RJ Cyler) just wants to get his last year over with without any bells and whistles. The two have been friends since childhood and continue their hobby of making short movie spoofs of old films using home video cameras and cell phones.

Inseparable from their first meeting as youngsters, it’s all about to change. One day Greg’s mom (Connie Britton) asks him if he knows Rachel (Olivia Cooke) who goes to his high school.  Since Rachel does have a lot of popularity, Greg confirms he knows of her.  She then drops the bomb that Rachel has Leukemia and she would like him to go to her house for a visit. After a lot of teen hemming and hawing, Greg finally agrees.  He’s greeted with a warm welcome at the door by Rachel’s mom (Molly Shannon), an immodest divorced woman, who welcomes Greg with open arms (obsessively).  After settling in with Rachel, the two find themselves at odds about why he came to visit her.

So begins a story of fascination, determination and a remarkable friendship, “that would have been if it could have been,” a romance for the teen ages. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (“Glee” and “American Horror Story”) takes the reigns on this very touching and heartfelt story.  Bringing together the perfect cast, he delivers a realistic view of a conditional relationship that tugs at the heartstrings and changes immaturity to adulthood. The comedy is light considering the subject matter and the drama becomes gripping and absorbing to the very end. It’s writer Jesse Andrews’ way of portraying a different kind of coming of age story and Gomez-Rejon nails it from the get go.

His actors carry the film on their shoulders and either make-it or break-it, each however, coming up winners.  In the male lead as Greg, Thomas Mann (Project X and Beautiful Creatures), makes his character an awkward yet crafty guy trying to fit in during his last year of high school. Mostly self-loathing, but openly inquisitive and expressive, Greg’s determined to complete his last year of “life behind bars” and then dissolve into an ordinary Joe.  But Rachel changes all that, or at least she tries while coping with her illness.  Mann has the qualities for a good future in film and reminds me a lot of Matthew Broderick during his rise to fame.

In the lead role as Rachel it’s a different story for Olivia Cooke. First off, she’s very believable as the Leukemia stricken teen who has to give up her senior year to fight against the disease. Struggling for her life, the treatments are draining and demoralizing. We see Cooke still full of energy when Rachel meets Greg, then accomplishes her arc to a changed girl at odds with her life changing sickness. It’s an uphill role though as Olivia Cooke has to shed her cystic fibrosis character she has made popular in more than 30 episodes of TV’s “Bates Motel.”  Although she does move nicely from one sickly shell to another, the role just doesn’t have enough differentiation in mood and influence to separate the two characters.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has been rated PG -13 by the MPAA for sexual content, drug material, language and some thematic elements. Parental accompaniment is suggested for immature pre-teens.

FINAL ANALYSIS: A cool film that does a very good job with the subject matter. (B)