Review of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) by Nascent — 20 Sep 2015

Film script tries too hard. It's not a bad film, but the first 35-40 minutes is a bit weak, and generally it falls flat. The characters are cardboard cut-out, and they're written to be more interesting than they are, for instance it's unbelievable that lead had a perfect intricate social system in school as it pretty much falls apart the moment you try to depict it on screen. Earl is written as a stereotypical 'black guy' with no depth. Lots of inconsistencies in the film, such as being raised on foreign speciality foods, but insulting people eating foreign speciality foods, and Greg's personality in general. In fact pretty much all the characters are unlikeable. Rachel's the most likeable character, but of course she would be as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Anything that pays homage to classic films seems to be massively overhyped by critics, and any drama about cancer seems to get massively overhyped too in the same way Be Kind Rewind (2008) was overhyped 7 years ago and 50/50 was overhyped 4 years ago. So this film, focusing on both, seems to be getting far more attention than I believe it deserves. Honestly I don't see this being any better than 2002's A Night To Remember.

That being said the short films (or at least what we as an audience get to see of them) are pretty cool, and honestly I'd have preferred if that took more of a centrepiece of the movie for the first half, and the characters developed more fluidly, as the actual script and characters is bland.