K-SCORE: 79
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Based on: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Starring: Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Molly Shannon, Connie Britton
Spoiler Level: Minor
“What the characters say doesn’t usually give the viewer a sense of clarity on the central conflict of Rachel’s leukemia, but that’s not really the point, and they are often genuinely funny.”
Senior year of high school, as I’ve said before, is so eminently writable that storytellers simply can’t resist its temptations. The experiences are believed to be universal, there are moments within the year like the first day back and prom that fall nicely on a narrative arc, and the year demands character development. It’s tidy and simple. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - if it has one significant story problem it’s that it can’t escape that tidiness. There’s a poignant moment in the beginning where Greg is describing the terrible films he and Earl make such as Senior Citizen Cane and saying they are often inspired by foreign films, which are weird and confusing and perhaps simply don’t make any sense, and thereby like life. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl tries to have its form match this content often. They succeed sometimes. The films they make are wonderfully random, the conversations between Rachel and Greg are strange, special, and tragic in a unique way, and the characters themselves aren’t cliche archetypes. Yet it’s essentially a dramatic high school movie anyway, featuring prom and promises, best friend fights, cafeteria brawls, awkward classroom moments and conflicts of classwork. The end especially tiptoes around these landmines with less grace than you might like.
Yet I can’t fault it too much. Even films that match that formula exactly aren’t always terrible. And Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has more original content than the average high school film by far. The characters are well-written, authentic, and, at times, exceptional. Earl is great. Everything he says about his and Greg’s life and friendship as well as Rachel’s illness is this spectacular combination of wise and disinterested. Nick Offerman spends the entire film eating weird foods, almost as if he didn’t much care whether they filmed him or not, used him in a scene or not. And the dialogue is well-written. What the characters say doesn’t usually give the viewer a sense of clarity on the central conflict of Rachel’s leukemia, but that’s not really the point, and they are often genuinely funny.
I probably wouldn’t want to watch Me and Earl and the Dying Girl again, but not because it’s poorly made. It’s tough a tough subject, a high school kid with cancer and her friends. The film tries so hard to embrace its weirdness and have fun, but ultimately there’s an overshadowing inescapable tragedy that has to be welded onto the parts of a high school year. The title spoils that going in, so you think you can mentally hedge against it, yet somehow you come out sighing, and wanting to do/think about something else.