Me and Earl and the Dying Girl movie review - Aussieboyreviews
IS ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL A FUNNY AND TOUCHING STORY OF TEENS BATTLING CANCER?
This extremely funny, touching, sarcastic and moving drama-comedy about cancer is great for all teenagers. It has the same ingredients of being an average something, but it succeeds in being loveable.
Storyline
Greg, a high school student who likes to create parodies of classic films with his co-worker, Earl, is forced by his mother into befriending Rachel, a girl from his school who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia, forming an unlikely bond and forever changing the outlook of these teenagers.
Movie Images
Movie details
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Cast: Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Molly Shannon, Jon Bernthal, Connie Britton
Writer: Jesse Andrews
Release Date (Australia): 13 June 2015
Runtime: 105 minutes/1h 45m
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
Language: English
CONTENT GUIDE (warning: May contain spoilers)
The film contains themes of cancer, death and crude humour.
The film contains a scuffle between two teenagers in a school hallway.
The film contains use of the words “ass”, “s**t”, “t*tties”, “damn”, “hell” and a single use of “f**k”.
The film contains verbal drug references and sequences in which teenagers hallucinate after implicitly unknowingly taking drugs.
None.
The film contains crude verbal references to sex, masturbating, breasts and “having a boner”.
mpaa rating
PG-13 (for sexual content, drug material, language and some thematic elements)
Aussie boy's thoughts
It’s another coming-of-age comedy-drama focusing on teens facing cancer, full of ordinary narration from the main character, amusing chapter-like labels for certain segments of the film, and with plenty of friendship dilemmas, but it somehow works out incredibly well. Thomas Mann plays your typical outcast teenager featured in almost every coming-of-age drama, but he’s an acquaintance of his fellow students and has a good sense of humour. His narration leads us through his story that he knows will come off as average and extremely satisfactory with nothing special to desire, in which his mother forces him to befriend a girl from his school who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia. Between him, his friend Earl, and this girl who is supposedly dying, an unlikely friendship is formed.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is just a movie that screams out as average; the storyline is average, the themes and topics are average, there’s an average character arc, and it doesn’t take a viewer new to movies to know that there’s going to be a lot of emotional play mixed in with the humour and attempted messages. Pretty much everything about it appeals as a product we’ve seen done a quadrillion times before. This is actually a beautiful, touching and moving film about friendship and the specialty of life. Pretty much every aspect of this movie, excluding the basic plot structure, works out perfectly. This is definitely a coming-of-age drama-comedy teenagers should see.
The acting all around is nothing short of spectacular, especially when you look at the main character. Greg could’ve very easily been an unlikable, dorky jerk, but Mann knows how to intervene with his performance to make sure that won’t be the case. The cinematography, direction, screenwriting and pacing are each deserving of many points; this is an extremely entertaining drama with such gorgeous visual tones, and the writing leaves its natural spark to be delivered by the actors. The soundtrack is also incredibly memorable, too, and contributes to the cinematography to provide the emotions of a scene. The first, second and final acts are simply astonishing in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It’s super funny, tearjerking at times, and every moment is lifted by convincing acting.
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