Title: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Starring: Thomas Mann, R.J. Cyler, Olivia Cooke
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins

What It Is: The me is Greg (Mann), and Earl (Cyler) is his “business associate” and our titular dying girl is Rachel (Cooke). When Rachel is diagnosed with a form of leukemia Greg’s mother (played by Connie Britton) sort of forces him to go hang out with her. One thing they never intended was to actually become friends. You see while Rachel was never an outcast she certainly never envisioned hanging out with two weirdos that swede their own versions of classic movies. It is this initial difference in personality that sparks a friendship that may just help Rachel figure out this leukemia thing. Based on Jesse Andrews’s popular young adult novel Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a look at an unconventional friendship.

What We Think: Sometimes when you watch a film it leaves you with a certain aura about it, an atmosphere. This film does that it has a youthful exuberance that permeates throughout. It seems to have a motto that being a teenager is hard, and I believe that to be true. You also start to realize (thanks to Cooke’s performance) the fragility of being young. Where last year’s The Fault in Our Stars focused on a love story between two young people dealing with similar situations this as the film itself states isn’t that type of movie. Instead, we’re given a friendship and a situation and not much else and told to figure it out and feel.

Our Grade: A, Great performances, and a show-stealing turn as Earl by Cyler make this a movie everyone needs to see! Its multiple references and snippets of classic cinema really soak this in an air of love for those very same films. When Greg swede’s A Clockwork Orange as A Sockwork Orange you get that he knows this film, loves it, and wishes he had made it. The best thing though is that the film lays it all out for you right off the bat, and never pretends it didn’t. Go see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl when it hits theaters on June 12th, maybe see it instead of giant dinosaurs…or after!

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