ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

Grade: B+

**Currently available at Redbox**

Starring: Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Olivia Cooke, Jon Bernthal, Nick Offerman, Molly Shannon, and Connie Britton; with Katherine Hughes as Madison

Premise: Self-deprecating slacker Greg finds his outlook on life altered when he befriends a classmate with cancer.

Rated PG-13 for language (including sexual references) and intense emotional content

Earlier this evening I read someone’s Twitter profile that featured an anonymous quote: it’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice.

That was the perfect sentiment to have in my head as I sat down to watch Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a biting and sobering yet gentle movie about mortality, friendship, and what a person can mean to another person. One of this movie’s closing scenes features a character quietly looking over keepsakes of another character’s, some of which are related to him and some not, but almost all of which bring back memories, make him smile and tear up as he remembers the essence of that person. The relationship wasn’t always super lively, one of their last encounters was a blunt, ugly blow-up, and at their most recent encounter barely any words were spoken, but the scene reminds you of the truth of that quote: It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice. After all, how do you want a person to think of you?

Adapted from a novel by Jesse Andrews by the author himself, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl just had too great a title for me to pass up. It’s a blunt and slightly morbid moniker, yet it’s undeniably-catchy. Turns out the film won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize for Drama at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but it didn’t find much of an audience in theaters, failing to earn back its relatively small budget. It has sobering subject matter and, in the pattern of Jason Reitman’s Juno, so revels in its quirkiness that at times it threatens to overwhelm the movie, but it’s ultimately a touching story starring three young, relatively-unknown actors who all give great performances.

Plot

Gangly Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann), thinks himself mighty self-aware. Self-deprecating, aggressively-anti-social yet just social enough to not get on anyone’s bad side, and a lover of low-budget foreign films, Greg is just biding his time in life. His parents (Connie Britton and Nick Offerman) have begun to talk college, but he couldn't care less. All he really wants to do is keep making cheap parody movies with his friend Earl (RJ Cyler) and swap the occasional man story with his hip, macho history professor (Jon Bernthal).

Early in his senior year, Greg stumbles into the orbit of one of his high school classmates, soft-spoken, level-headed Rachel (Olivia Cooke). Rachel has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. It’s awkward and Greg’s awkward and he’d rather not, but he feels more than a hint of guilt—plus his mom is nagging him—so he keeps reaching out to Rachel and spending time with her. A lot of times he feels like he must be making a fool of himself, doing weird impressions and making goofy low-budget films and being awkward and sarcastic, but Rachel becomes a fixture in his life. There’s nothing romantic between them, but they keep spending time together—sometimes exclusively—even after Rachel begins treatment and her hair falls out, starts to grow back, and falls out again. Rumors about them abound, of course, and then one of Rachel’s friends, Madison (Katherine Hughes), asks Greg if he and Earl will make one of their little movies for Rachel. It will cheer her up, she thinks. It proves a long process, as Greg can’t decide what he wants to say to this person who he accidentally became close to, and whom he finds he doesn’t want to let go.

What Works?
Quirky indie comedies with particularly self-aware protagonists are nothing new, but Jesse Andrews’ script separates itself with some really clever touches. There’s a running gag about how, to supposedly “outcast” or “uncool” guys, hot girls approaching them is like a moose trampling on a chipmunk—the former is rocking the latter’s whole world and they don’t even know it—that becomes a meme-worthy little tradition of the movie’s, with brief stop-motion animated skits signaling when a certain character is about to appear. The titles of Greg and Earl’s parody movies--based off the classic movies that inspired them--are a hoot as well: ‘Anatomy of a Burger’ for Anatomy of a Murder, ‘The Complete Lack of Conversation’ for The Conversation, ‘Eyes Wide Butt’ for Eyes Wide Shut, ‘The 400 Bros’ for The 400 Blows, ‘The Rad Shoes’ for The Red Shoes, ‘Ate ½ (Of My Lunch)’ for 8 1/2, ‘Scabface’ for Scarface, ‘The Last Crustacean of Christ’ for The Last Temptation of Christ, etc… But the script isn’t all jokes and quips—Me and Earl largely steers clear of preaching, of the kind of forced romantic angles stories like this almost always have, and does its best in key moments to be simple and real rather than really, really witty.

Greg really is a wonderfully-written character, and it’d be tempting to call him “too weird” or “too awkward” if I didn’t know people who act like him (heck, with a little less inhibition in social situations, I could be Greg), and Thomas Mann plays him brilliantly. He’s funny and awkward and a little aloof, but when he begins to crack under the weight of this so-called “doomed friendship”, you really feel for him. You feel for Rachel, too, of course, played in a sincere yet unshowy performance by Olivia Cooke. Mann and Cooke are great together, often natural, sometimes awkward in a real, genuinely-awkward sort of way, but they also hit every high note in their characters' longest, most emotional argument, when they say all the meanest things they want to say to each other in light of her impending demise, a wrenching scene shot in one long take. RJ Cyler’s Earl isn’t fully explored, but Earl, even more than Greg, proves refreshingly frank and outspoken, saying the things everyone is thinking even if it’s not always the socially-acceptable thing to do.

Korean-born Cinematographer Chung-hoo Chung’s camera does some truly impressive work, livening up this mostly-level headed tale with the kind of aerial shots and wide-angle close-ups usually reserved for more prestige art films. Nico Muhly and Brian Eno’s score also does some wonderful things, especially when it takes over during the final three, mostly-wordless scenes. The score and the camerawork come together in a staggering climactic sequence you’ll be hard-pressed to forget.

What Doesn’t Work?

Like Juno and countless other snarky indies, Me and Earl wants to be really funny and really clever, and it shows. I suppose that’s the way to get noticed when you’re a tiny film struggling for recognition and production—to be something people haven’t seen before—but when an audience can tell you’re proud of yourself for being so quirky and different, it shows you're overdoing it. For instance, the movie’s slogan is “A Little Friendship Never Killed Anyone”—a clever pun, to be sure, but too much emphasis on the “killed” part becomes morbid and less likable. A late moment after the really cathartic finale in which Greg refers back to the fact that his friend Rachel died, Died, Died puts a damper on the thought-provoking, emotional closing, like he's joking about her death. Then there’s the character of Rachel’s mom, a boozy divorcee played fiercely by Molly Shannon, who has a ridiculously-uncomfortable character intro that belongs in a different film. And the film lingers a little long tying things up, exploring about five different scenes featuring little dialogue when the first few drove home their point.

I don’t wanna be too hard. Me and Earl could have been a tidier, neater, and deeper film, but it is very effective considering its proudly disaffected-protagonist, whose mindset dominates the proceedings early on. If you can’t tell from the whole It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice tie-in, what will stick with you about this movie is not the negatives.

Content

Surprisingly-clean for an indie with teenage protagonists, Me and Earl doesn’t have any nudity or sexuality (though there are some spoken sexual references). There is a fair amount of swearing, including a big F-bomb, and our titular characters have a scene where they’re stoned, but, otherwise, this movie is minimally-offensive. Well…the movie does come with the “is it right for people suffering a terminal illness to thinking about giving up when people care about them” angle that could spark some conversation and debate. It's not an easy idea, as explored in the aforementioned lengthy argument between Rachel and Greg. The movie doesn't preach, but it will definitely get audience members thinking about their own opinions regarding "quality of life" and such.

Bottom Line

Like its slightly-morbid but undeniably-catchy title, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a quirky but undeniably-likable little movie. A winner of a couple big awards for Drama at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this is a movie about a main character with cancer that is not a tearjerker teen romance but does remind you how you can affect someone’s life—even if you don’t feel like you matter that much—by being there when they need someone. Shoot, it reminds you how much you mean to someone even if they’re not sick, and the stakes aren’t that high, if you just give them your time and attention. Insightful, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and fronted by three great performances from little-known lead actors, this is a Little Engine That Could kind of movie that makes you want to be a better person.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Screenplay by Jesse Andrews; Based on his novel

Rated PG-13

Length: 105 minutes