Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

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Before you see this movie, you should read the book. It's the funniest book I've ever read, and I was so stoked to see it on the big screen. I picked up the book after seeing it advertised as the antithesis to "The Fault In Our Stars". After reading the book, I can confirm this as an accurate description. Both books deal with a girl with cancer, but "Me and Earl" pulls no punches in its realism, often making fun of the sappiness of "The Fault in Our Stars". The main character, Greg, is an awkward, often narcissistic teenager with a love for movies. His mom makes him hang out with an old acquaintance, Rachel, who has fallen ill with leukemia. It's not a love story in the slightest, but it's charming because of this.

Both the book and movie have incredibly authentic characters. They're each unique, well developed, and never become genre tropes. They really bring the story to life. Even Greg and Earl's teacher, Mr. McCarthy, who could have easily been the typical high school movie mentor, is a guy with tattoos on the back of his neck that frequently exclaims, "Respect the research".

The screenplay for the movie was written by Jesse Andrews, the author of the book. You can tell - the tone of the movie does a great job of matching that of the book, and visuals give the book's humor a whole new dimension. The movie is hilarious, with Greg's humor often manifesting in quirky daydream sequences (sometimes in stop-motion).

This is a movie about friendship - and what happens when a teenager opposed to making friends is forced to be a friend. Though the movie sugarcoats Rachel and Greg's relationship slightly more than the book does (Movie Greg's life is more changed/learns more from Rachel than Book Greg), there are clearly no romantic undertones - I am thankful the movie is faithful to the book in that respect. The movie and book end on a slightly different note, but I appreciate both equally in their respective mediums. 

I really appreciated the unique camera angles and movements - you can see a few in the above trailer. There's some beautiful steadicam work and really well done long takes - all acted by a stellar cast. Overall, it's a fun movie teeming with heart and emotion that any teenager can relate to. Go check it out.

I loved this movie, but had three main gripes. These gripes contain some big-time spoilers.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Gripe #1: A big part of the story is that Greg and his friend Earl agree to make a film for Rachel. In the movie, Greg shows the film to Rachel before she dies, but the film is barely seen. You can vaguely make out some sort of blood-cell-esque stop motion, but there is a huge disconnect that occurs when you can't see the film and the passion in the film that makes Rachel cry. 

Gripe #2: Near the end of the movie, Greg has a minor squabble with Madison, a girl who he thinks to be extremely attractive. Madison ends up asking Greg to prom. The entire prom dynamic wasn't in the book, so I was intrigued as to how it was going to unfold. Long story short, it didn't. Greg gets in the limo, but goes to the hospital instead (This is good.). He spends his prom night with Rachel instead of with Madison (This is good). After this scene, in which Rachel dies, Madison and Greg don't interact for the remainder of the movie (This is bad). There was no real resolution to this minor sub-plot, and the whole prom thing ended up feeling useless and unnecessary. We are left without a clue as to how Greg and Madison's relationship stands.

Gripe #3: Throughout the movie, Greg tells us in the form of a voiceover that Rachel doesn't die at the end. He assures us of this multiple times. 

Rachel dies in the end. Greg says something like, "I know I told you Rachel wasn't going to die, but I really did believe that." For me, it was dumb and misleading and again, didn't add anything to the plot.

BONUS GRIPE: Near the end of the movie, Greg discovers Rachel's hidden talent of cutting up books to make art. (OK, so what?) The movie tries to push the whole "you can learn new things about people even when they're dead", but Rachel's secret crafty superpower seemed forced and unimportant.

BONUS REDDIT COMMENT