Review of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) by Movee F — 23 Sep 2015

The main character, Greg, is the most unlikable and least interesting of the trio of the title, and unfortunately the movie is way too focused on him. Too quirky and "indie" for its own good.

This should be Rachel's movie, not Greg's. The movie is solid when it's just their characters talking and interacting with one another, but that really doesn't take up much overall screen time.

Greg is just too whiny to enjoy any of the time we spend with him. I admit, I see some of myself as a teenager in Greg, but then again I wouldn't want to hang out with my teenage self, either. I chuckled a bit at some of the titles of their home movies, but then it kept going, and going, and going.

The whole home movie stuff takes up a significant amount of the movie, but it never really ends up justifying why it's such a large part of the movie. It ends up just being filler that perhaps the filmmaker was too enamored with.

The movie Greg makes for Rachel at the end is terrible, and not in a so bad it's good way, it's just bad. I understand that the movie is trying not be "that" sort of movie, where the video would be a obviously professionally filmed and satisfying summation of the movie while also being entertaining (for a parallel that comes to mind, take the end dance sequence of Napoleon Dynamite that is surprisingly good).

Several times throughout, the movie clearly states it's not trying to be a typical movie of its genre. That's all well and good, except that the movie has no idea how to stay away from cliches and still have good and interesting scenes that make up for it.