I’d really like you to see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Movie Review
By Richard Roeper
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

WHAT’S the story with that intense, cool teacher with all those tattoos and all that enthusiasm for his work? What about the dad who putters about the house in his robe, cooking up exotic and often disgusting delicacies?

Or the drop-dead gorgeous, popular girl in school who’s fiercely loyal to her best friend — is there more to her story?

Thing is, the aforementioned are but fringe players in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and yet I felt as if the film could start following around any of them (and about a half-dozen other supporting characters), Slackers-style, and they’d be worthy of the center stage.

Here is a film with no wasted characters, no wasted scenes. Yes, it’s fanciful and arch and indie-creative, but every inch of it feels real.

With a smart, funny and moving screenplay by Jesse Andrews (adapting his own book), beautiful directing by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, wonderfully creative cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung, gorgeous music from Brian Eno and Nico Muhly and three winning performances from the leads, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is one of those movies I’m going to badger you to see because even though you might think you don’t want to see a movie called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, I’d really like you to see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

So go see it. Please.

Thomas Mann, giving the kind of performance that would have gained John Hughes’ attention a generation ago, plays Greg Gaines, who has mastered the art of navigating all the cliques and cliches of high school life without getting his psychic uniform dirty. Greg compares the carved-out corners of the high school cafeteria to the Gaza Strip, and he manages to avoid becoming a member of any group AND avoid their ridicule or wrath by being just friendly enough and moving quickly past without engaging on any kind of meaningful level. His goal is to make it through all four years as the invisible kid.

Greg’s best and only friend is Earl (R.J. Cyler, terrific) — but Greg’s protective emotional barricade is so thick he insists they’re not friends, they’re “co-workers” because they collaborate on short spoofs of iconic films, e.g., A Sockwork Orange, Senior Citizen Kane, My Dinner With Andre the Giant and 2:48 Cowboy. (The movies within the movie are insane and goofy and hilarious.)

Everyday, Greg and Earl meet for lunch in the office of their history teacher (an excellent Jon Bernthal, virtually unrecognizable from his Walking Dead days), watching Werner Herzog on YouTube in favor of actually connecting with the high school experience.

Greg would be content to play out his high school days in that fashion, but his loving albeit ever-intrusive mother (Connie Britton) throws a wrench in his plans by insisting Greg visit a classmate he barely knows: Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who has been diagnosed with leukemia.

Greg’s first encounter with Rachel is a thing of offbeat beauty. She tells him he doesn’t have to visit her out of pity. He says he’s not visiting her out of pity; he’s visiting her because his mother is making him do it.

From that point forward, with Greg providing a wry but sincere narrative, Greg and Rachel strike up a close friendship that could be romance but maybe it won’t be a romance, and she might die but she could get better, and meanwhile, Greg and Earl get coerced into making a movie for Rachel, and that leads to some serious tensions all around.

Nick Offerman provides deadpan comic relief as Greg’s dad, he of the bathrobe and the disgusting food offerings. Molly Shannon is great as Rachel’s mother, who skirts the line when it comes to Greg and Earl — offering them alcohol and baring her soul to them. Katherine C. Hughes does nice work as Madison, the beautiful girl who renders Greg an idiot whenever they cross paths. (Gomez-Rejon illustrates Greg’s theories about romance with nifty little stop-motion animation sequences.)

Rachel’s illness isn’t some cutesy, dark, “meet-cute” for these characters. Just because Greg loves her as a friend (and maybe more) doesn’t mean everything’s going to be all right. She loses her hair and she loses her energy and eventually loses her interest in getting better — and Greg doesn’t deal with all of that like a hero. He handles it like a kid his age would most likely deal with it.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has those handkerchief moments, but the laughs far outnumber the hard and sad punches. This is a movie that’s grounded in reality, has just enough whimsy and soars to the stars. It’s one of the best films of 2015. — Universal UClick
Rating: 4 stars
MTRCB Rating: PG