Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Description

Have you heard the one about the teenage guy who befriends a dying girl and has his life changed forever? Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) has—and he’s not falling for it. A movie-obsessed misfit whose primary preoccupations are hanging out with his best friend Earl (RJ Cyler) and putting his own DIY twist on cinematic classics (A Sockwork Orange, Ver’d He Go?), Greg is just trying to waltz his way through his senior year of high school. Why would he be interested in his mom’s insistence on keeping the terminally ill daughter of a family friend company? Then Greg meets Rachel (Olivia Cooke), the leukemia patient in question, and finds a kindred spirit in this irreverent young woman. Suddenly, the angry young man with a movie camera finds inspiration and connection in the last place he’d ever though he would: real life. The toast of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won both Grand Jury and Audience Awards, first-time director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s take on boy-meets-sick-girl romance totally upends the subgenre while potently delivering the goods. (Bring tissues. Lots of them.) It’s also a funny, emotionally resonant valentine to cinephilia run amuck, blending Greg and Earl’s goofy parodies with a reminder that there’s more to the world than working one’s way through the Criterion Collection. And though the film features strong supporting performances, including The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal as a tough-guy teacher and Parks & Recreation’s Nick Offerman as Greg’s reclusive dad, it’s the double act of Mann and Cooke that have the force of a punch to the gut. They’re the heart and soul of this tragicomic tour de force. —David Fear

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