Plot: High schooler Greg, who spends most of his time making parodies of classic movies with his co-worker Earl, finds his outlook forever altered after befriending a classmate who has just been diagnosed with cancer.
Rating: 7.5/10
In hindsight it might not have been the best idea to watch a movie about cancer when I just lost someone to cancer. If you want your opinions to change about cancer movies, see someone die because of it. In hindsight, that is such a stupid statement, but you know what I mean.
Movies involving cancer are most often idealistic and I don’t blame the producers for it. It is a very hard topic and by injecting some optimism here and there it can bring some happiness back into the world – for people who haven’t survived it / haven’t seen what the disease does.
Me, Earl and the Dying girl is the best it is going to get without killing everyone’s happiness. I have great love for Sundance and this movie is so typical Sundance – relatively low budget, quite quirky and good enough to watch. The dialogue is very fast and hilarious. Greg Gaines (fantastic performance here by Thomas Mann) is a unique and entertaining character. It is easy to miss that this child obviously suffers from a crippling self-loathing and probably has a ton of social anxiety as well because he is intelligent and does not hide in his room – dangerous qualities in any teenager with problems. Greg’s friendship with Earl (RJ Cyler) is endearing, and Earl’s spot on assessment of Greg’s personality just shows that they will be friends forever.
Oliva Cooke is Rachel, the leukemia patient. She is talented and memorable (I just had to substitute rememberable for memorable, because it is actually a real word). She did a good job with playing a cancer patient – it can’t be easy, and some of the things the character says will stay with me for a long time.
Nick Offerman plays Greg’s father, and it was nice to see him in something. Albeit strange, his character isn’t just another Ron Swanson knock-off, so it was good to see him be another character.
Jon Benrthal as Mr. McCartney is a character I really liked. Can we just get more of these teachers in school, please? Mr. McCartney wasn’t overbearing and he supplemented the story quite well.
I think the quirk and the originality of the film carries a lot of weight. It does well in addressing the genre, it isn’t this romantic film that is total bull. I enjoyed it, more than I thought I would, because it is funny and sad and has a lot of truth in it. Definitely recommended.
PS: Total LOLZ for the Hugh Jackman voice over. Was great.
Life of this city girl 