Review of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) by Kenneth B — 22 Jul 2015

So after seeing the trailer and picking up the premise that this film's about a group of teenagers (three friends), and one of them has cancer (the girl) of course I made the connection that this film is going to be very similar to The Fault in Our Stars, but it looked a lot less sentimental, and a lot funnier, so that's was expecting, based purely off the trailers.

So I was right about this film being a lot funnier. I was a little put off by the comedy at first, expecting a cheesy sentimental film like The Fault in Our Stars, and instead I was greeted by an honest portrait of what it's like to be a teenager who's afraid of fitting, and goes to such great lengths that's he completely disconnected himself from every other human, and how there is in fact comedy (as well as sadness) in that situation.

See, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl isn't really about cancer. It's about growing up, and how the people we encounter in our lives and choose to have around us help us do that. If you notice, the first person listed in the title is not the "The Dying Girl." She is his friend, and a very important character, but this isn't a love story, and this isn't her story.

My favorite character however was Earl. So often in movies if a black character is in a movie and he's friends with a white character, his accent is a reflection of his friends, or if he does have an ethnic accent, it's used for humor, so he can say "bro" or other cliche black character things and they'll sound "funnier". Earl is just a regular guy who's black, who talks like he's from a black neighborhood, and the film doesn't play this for laughs, it just accepts it and moves on. This are sort of sweetness to the honesty of this film, even in the simple things, like letting a black character speak the way many black people speak in real life without apologizing or creating a comedic angle for it.

Over all, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl is a touching film that depicts the coming of age years honestly.