Review of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) by Brandon W — 24 Dec 2015

Me and Earl and the Dying is directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is about a kid who plays it safe in the high school, until of a sudden, one of the students has leukemia which the main kid's parents tell him to go by to the student's house to hang out with him.

It'll be awkward at first, but they'll form an unexpected friendship when the time goes on. So for the standard form of the plot, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this film and reminded me a lot of Fault of Our Stars which I wasn't worried that this film was going to copy that film, well besides the aspect where the girl has a type of disease and a guy creates a friendship with her, this film is not nearly as similar as I thought was going to be.

Its brilliantly cast, Thomas Mann, one of his best performances I've seen which I'm finally glad that he's in a film that everybody would enjoy as he's a good actor, just in the wrong films that people won't like.

Olivia Cooke is terrific in it and pretty much has the emotions down, happy, sad, depressed, excited, and just fallen apart. The chemistry between the main kids is completely amazing and it felt real and relatable to me.

The chemistry between Thomas Mann and RJ Cyler, who I think is great in this for his debut film, is also really good and is quite different then what you see in typical high school films. The screenwriting by the author himself Jesse Andrews is very well written with a good balance of funny humor and emotional moments that are well executed.

The characters are very memorable and very relatable to your teen years, especially the main kid for me because sometimes in high school when I'm with a group of friends, it feels like I don't fit in with them as they talk about stuff that I'm not familiar with, but that's only sometimes and for most of the time, I fit in quite nicely.

The movie is quite unpredictable at times, and it gives a lot of insight on the high school students which I find really interesting. I had a great time watching Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and is better than what I expected out of a film that could've been like Fault in Our Stars.