ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon). 105 minutes. Opens Friday (June 12). Special free screening tonight (Monday, June 8) at the Royal. See listing. Rating: NNN
Where to watch: iTunes
Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is a certified Sundance crowd-pleaser in the vein of Little Miss Sunshine and (500) Days Of Summer, meaning that it tells an emotional story in an intensely self-aware, stylized fashion.
Here, we experience a very serious drama through the perspective of flippant teenage filmmaker Greg (Thomas Mann), who’s telling us the story of his classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke), whose diagnosis of leukemia leads to their unlikely friendship. That story is lovely, and beautifully acted by Mann and Cooke. (Molly Shannon is also quietly terrific as Rachel’s reeling mother.)
But director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Jesse Andrews pile on so many affectations and gimmicks – Greg’s dad (Nick Offerman) likes weird food! Greg and his buddy Earl (RJ Cyler) make goofy parodies of popular movies! – that it often feels like Me And Earl And The Dying Girl isn’t willing to confront the real emotions at its core. It’s one thing for Greg to be unable to break through his own cynicism, but the movie about him is supposed to be a little more mature.
See our feature with Olivia Cooke and Thomas Mann here.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
