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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

9/20/2016

8 Comments

 

B-
​2.83

A budding cinephile is guilted into spending time with a cancer-stricken classmate.

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Starring Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, and Olivia Cooke
Initial Review by Phil Crone

Picture
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” might pander to critic sensibilities with the famous movie parodies and decidedly hipster references early on, but it’s a great story with a lot of heart built around three likable characters.
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The movie lives and dies with its characters, and most of all with Greg.  I could see Greg being polarizing, but I found him likable.  He’s got a dry sense of humor, rattling off several great lines throughout the movie, and he’s the type of painfully-stunted introvert that I think is easy to root for.  We’re getting the story through his eyes, and it’s interesting to see how the story morphs as Greg tells it.  His opening line winds up being all we think we need to know about his ruined senior year and terrible movie that killed a girl.  As we go along, we feel Greg soften to his situation of being forced into an awkward friendship with Rachel and how it helped him grow as a person.  This gave me the sense that Greg didn’t realize how much he cherished his time with Rachel until he’s actually telling the story.  This impression is only reiterated by the details as the story progresses.  Early scenes feel very stiff, as they should, given the situation Greg and Rachel find themselves in.  By the end, I get the sense that Greg began to soften and present a more distorted, lighter side to the affair.  He even goes so far as to retract his opening statement of Rachel dying, attempting to convince himself more than the audience that the ending isn’t already written.  Ultimately, this gives me the sense that we don’t know the whole story about Earl or Rachel, but in Greg’s version at least, they’re impossible to dislike.

Rachel will be the character I remember most from this movie, and it’s difficult not to admire her in some way.  We don’t get much of a sense who Rachel was prior to her illness, and that’s ok given that this is Greg’s story.  Greg’s an awkward kid; he probably didn’t even think to ask.  That is especially true given the final revelation of Rachel’s artistic ability.  I felt worse for Greg at that point than when she died, as he now knew he missed out on so much about her.  That stands out as one of the best moments of the movie.  What we do know about Rachel is best summed up in her final letter to the Pittsburgh State Admissions: she was at her worst, and she loved Greg as a friend for everything he did for her.  

Beyond feelings about Greg, the other divisive point of this movie will likely be Rachel’s decision to stop treatment.  It’s impossible to judge for any of us, having never been in a situation like that.  (Or for me even more not knowing anyone in that situation either.)  I think it shows maturity beyond her years, something you get the sense of from any person going through an illness like this.  The movie does a good job of making that moment a real gut punch, just as it was to Greg.

And of course, I have to mention Earl, who steals the show despite not much character development.  Earl dominates nearly every scene he’s in, whether it be talking shit to a bitch-ass cat, convincing Greg to get him ice cream, or trying to figure out if Greg will finally “play with them titties.”  One thing I did get a sense of was Greg’s jealousy of Earl in a couple senses.  For starters, Earl is light years beyond Greg in self-assuredness, which I think anyone would want to aspire to.  Second, it seems as if there’s an entire romantic subplot between Earl & Rachel that Greg chooses to entirely omit from the story, and likely was an additional source of their falling out midway through the movie.  It left me wondering what a version of this story from Earl’s POV would look like.
​

I really enjoyed “Me and Earl and The Dying Girl,” one of the better “quirky comedies” out there if you ask me.  The structure is very well done, capturing Greg’s changing thoughts of the story as he puts it to paper.  All three characters are very likable, with Earl nearly stealing the show in a support role where he doesn’t get enough development as a character.
Grade: A-

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8 Comments
Admin
9/21/2016 11:01:36 pm

Saved for replies to Phil's review.

Reply
Bryan
9/21/2016 11:45:34 pm

A few points here. The mother-teen interaction was sincere and funny, although rather Hollywood stereotypical. I love movies that present the effects of being on drugs in an oddly satisfying way. The variety of food and its subtle role was pleasant. Not enough movies show people eating or mention the food.

The high school girl with cancer and sincere boy friend story is hard to mess up, and this movie doesn't. It's a good mix of drama and comedy. The comedy is subtle, but it's enough to break up the sadness.

I wish I knew more old movie titles to better understand the remakes.

The stereotype students bothered me a touch and the principal throwing kids off school grounds for fighting is in no way factual. For such a realistic movie, that scene should have been rewritten or tossed.

This was cute, but didn't do anything which hasn't been done prior. B. Not sure what I gave Fault in our Stars, but they were close for me, Earl might get to a B+ or they might both drop after I read others' thoughts.

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Chelsea
9/21/2016 11:48:42 pm

Kind of a quote, kind of a paraphrase ... "I liked this more than Fault in Our Stars because this wasn't a love story. It was just real life. This felt more sad because it felt more real than Fault in Our Stars.

I've never graded anything. I don't want to start now."

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Sean
9/22/2016 10:36:56 am

Isn't Fault in our Stars a true story? I think the guy just died last week

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Bobby
9/22/2016 11:37:32 am

Not a true story... Green was influenced by a girl he knew that died of cancer a couple years before the book. But, Hazel Grace, the main character, isn't even a portrayal of her.

Jon
9/23/2016 12:02:50 am

I am very much conflicted on this film. One of the last things I remember the dearly departed movie site The Dissolve publishing is a negative review, followed a few days later by a positive review, both from critics I deeply respect. I didn't read either of them, but just filed it away under random film knowledge to mention if MAEATDG ever came up in conversation, like, "No, I haven't seen that but I know critics are divided on it." After watching the movie, it's easy to see where the conversation comes from. Is this classic example of the indie teen genre too quirky or just quirky enough? If it is too quirky, what does it really think about said quirks? Is this a manic pixie dream girl, or a send-up of that particular trope? Is it annoyingly meta for no real reason, or is that kind of reflexive irony just the way teens live nowadays? Is this movie sexist in the way an interesting girl of hidden talents has to die to teach a perhaps-middling teen boy of small talent a lesson? If the answer on some of these questions comes down hard on one side, that's the difference between a know-nothing mash-up and a knowing play on an established sub-genre. My initial instinct is the former, but let's see if I can't talk myself into the latter.

The number one thing holding me back from embracing this film is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's direction. I know of his work from American Horror Story, bar none the most over-directed and over-written show currently on TV, and maybe longer. So many unnecessary aspect ratio changes, and fisheye lenses, and Dutch angles. It adds exactly nothing to that show, and it adds nothing here. If the rule is show and don't tell, Gomez-Rejon shows so much that he loops all the way around that rule and gets to telling. Holy shit, we get it, there's a lot of distance between Greg and Rachel, enough with the ostentatious distortion of the room to maximize their actual distance. During a classroom shot, there's a split-second frame that is just an overhead shot of the class, after the scene has been taking place, so it goes normal framing of a location we've already been in, then unnecessary and showy overhead shot for a second or two, and then back to normal. It's just pointless.

There's also a level of quirk in this film that surpasses what is normally acceptable. I can't decide if it's commenting on tropes or just embracing them. I think the measuring stick is whether or not these characters are defined by their quirks or transcend them. For instance, is the cool teacher with the tattoos just about flipping what a teacher is supposed to look like for a cheap chuckle, or does he have something to say regardless of what he looks like? In this instance, I think, yes, Jon Bernthal is giving a performance deeper than the superficiality of his character. Ill Phil or goth Scott Mayhew do not surpass that level, functioning as jokes and jokes alone. I like Nick Offerman as much as the next guy, but his character isn't much beyond his offbeat interests. Molly Shannon is playing the closest thing to a recognizable person in the supporting cast, and I think she gives the understated performance of the film. If her defining, on-the-surface characteristic is that she drinks too much, well, the viewer can put the pieces together. I don't know why Nick Offerman likes exotic food so much beyond the movie needing to make his character artificially unique.

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Jon
9/23/2016 12:03:29 am

The main trio is where the quirkiness starts to get muddled and fold back on itself. There's something subtle here that both judges the artificial uniqueness I just mentioned and embraces it, and I'm still uncertain how I feel about it. It mocks the cliquey-ness of high school while celebrating how fulfilling being in that clique can be. Ill Phil might get just as much joy out of his bad rapping as Rachel gets out of squirrel-wallpaper treasure hunts. What's funny (masturbating onto pillows) between people sharing an in-joke becomes weird and gross amongst the uninitiated. MAEATDG even has the indie hallmark of a series of fun hats and/or wigs, but at least here, it's organic. I think the film knows that these kind of things are defensive in nature, a wall of shared interests that keep people from having to discuss their real concerns and emotions, but it can't invest the kind of time to break down walls in any characters but the main trio.

Greg, Earl, and Rachel are an interesting triumvirate, though the main character is the least interesting. He has less of an arc than Rachel, who decides to die over the course of the film. He's not as charismatic as Earl is, and it seems like his home life has enough drama to sustain itself if he was at the center. Greg's problems, when compared to the other two, boil down to self-esteem, small potatoes compared to concerns of health and economics. Ergh, why is it so hard to connect with people who have much more impactful problems! Greg's specific level of neuroticism is even something I can relate to, as I'm occasionally certain that some of the compliments I get are lies, but then, I don't need someone to die from cancer for the benefit of patching over that particular mental gap. Also, despite Gomez-Rejon's obvious cinematic opinion, his final film for Rachel wasn't very good and horrifyingly pretentious, and probably undid whatever good Rachel did with the admissions office. She was right to go into that coma.

Alluded to above is what I've been most wrestling with. Rachel dies, and the movie ends with Greg in a better place, sending off his college application. The world has enough white-dude-learns-a-lesson movies that it doesn't need many more, but leaving the optics of it, I got to wondering what is so wrong with taking a lesson from a person's death in the first place. Better a moment of self-analysis and reflection than the malicious banality of 'better places' and 'we'll see them again.' Maybe it's the of-the-moment lesson that Greg learns that is bugging me. He describes the crippling knowledge of his mom telling him he's handsome and knowing it's a lie, which keeps him from trusting people in general, so he's essentially figuring out to accept that when someone praises him, he should take them at their word, and then incorporate that into his personality and turn that self-loathing into self-deprecation, or lose it altogether. That is an 'I'm special' rallying cry if ever I've heard one, and something that makes an unsympathetic ending. Also, a movie that has been putting characters into eccentric pockets doesn't get to say just kidding, every person is an unfolding flower, and our cliched characters actually aren't cliched at all. Ill Phil actually scrawls out his lyrics in tiny calligraphy on delicate rolls of toilet paper.

I did enjoy most of the performances, but this film never rose above the level of enjoyable. It missed the big emotional beats in a disappointing way. Just as I didn't give Major League any credit for the invigoration I felt during a big game, which is naturally invigorating, I don't give this film credit for making a teenage funeral sad. I don't know that I answered all my questions or got me to a closer place of realization with MAEATDG. I do know that between Gomez-Rejon's overdirection and the general feeling of conflict this film left me with, we're at one version of a C+. The casting and performances save this one.

Reply
Lane
10/13/2016 12:06:27 am

I actually got to see this film in a little indie theater on opening weekend. It was me, sharing a huge bucket of popcorn with myself, and a bunch of hippie grandparents all gaggling at the film. That should tell you what you need to know about the aesthetics.

Grandparents love lots of weird angle shots.

I left “ME&tDG” feeling two things – sadly emotionally manipulated and dirty. I was sad because a teenage girl died and she was in love. I was manipulated because the narrator assured me, just one hour a forty minutes prior, she would not die in this film. Fucker.

But I also suspected him of being an unreliable narrator so, partly, I blame myself.

But let’s be honest, this movie doesn’t exist without its cultural brethren – “Fault in Their Stars” and probably that “Twilight” shit. And it even borrowed a bit too heavily for my taste from Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind, Please Rewind.”

But it’s okay to borrow and use derivatives…that’s what art is all about. And yet, the literary houses have carved out a space for narratives like “Earl”—they’re called “Young Adult” lit. Film, however, doesn’t seem to have carved out its own niche market for this particular genre. Sure, studios have their target audiences, but it’s hard to target an audience for this film. I felt too grown up seeing it. Younger kids would obviously be offended.

Those are all technical issues, and yet it’s the technical issues that mattered to me in this film.

James Baldwin’s quote haunts every book and film I partake: “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mark of cruelty.”

The end of “ME&tDG” played too much in the sandbox of sentimentality for me to endorse.

I won’t lie…my first viewing in a little arthouse theater had a few tears in the corners of my eyes. A second viewing dispelled the myth.

Grade: C+

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