>Now, based on a Young Adult novel, I’m not really the target audience for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. But with a positive buzz from the Sundance Film Festival and a lot of positive reviews since, I was sufficiently interested to check it out.
I was initially very pleased with how cine literate the film was. The main character, Gregg (Thomas Mann) loves classic cinema with Werner Herzog a particular favourite. That meant I felt it easy to identify with him, as I was discovering a lot of the films referenced at around the same age.
Gregg is badgered by his Mum to make friends with Rachel (Olivia Cooke) who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia. The early scenes of those two forming an uneasy bond are the best in the film and Cooke’s performance stands head and shoulders above all the others on show.
However, beyond that, the film is deeply flawed. The parents and teachers feel like clichés, and Gregg’s “work colleague” Earl (RJ Cyler) is so poorly developed that it feels like a token black character. The sub Wes Anderson quirky direction – all skewed camera angles and pointless in film titles – starts to grate and the ending is mawkish and manipulative. Worst of all, for me, after spending much of the movie trying to create a film for his dying friend, the end result is pretty rubbish!
Rating: 4.5 out of 10