Me Earl and the Dying Girl is a coming-of-age tale that will really grow on you
HIGH school senior Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) and his friend Earl (RJ Cyler) have an unusual hobby: making parodies of classic movies with punny names.
HIGH school senior Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) and his friend Earl (RJ Cyler) have an unusual hobby: making parodies of classic movies with punny names.
The boys’ version of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, for instance, is called Grumpy Cul de Sacs, and their Stanley Kubrick tribute, A Sockwork Orange, features a cast of (what else?) sock puppets.
While film buffs in the audience are chortling away at the more obscure gags, take note that the movie (adapted by Jesse Andrews from his novel) is signalling its desire to be unlike movies that you have seen before, even though Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is a teen coming-of-age film through and through.
Certainly this is an unusual contribution to The Breakfast Club genre, and one that bursts with inventiveness both in what the characters do and the way it’s filmed.
Greg lives in San Francisco with a cat called Cat Stevens, his father (Nick Offerman), an academic who never seems to leave the house and loads Greg’s lunch bag with peculiar international foods, and a mother (Connie Britton) who insists he go and spend time with a former childhood friend who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia.
The “dying girl” of the title is Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who feels just as awkward about Greg’s reappearance in her life as he does – until they start to like each other.
It’s primarily about Greg’s struggles to fit in at school and the way he uses humour and creativity as a shield.
The progress of Rachel’s illness makes life real to a kid who has taken pains to dodge it.
Opens Thursday
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
Released by 20th Centruy Fox
Rating 3.5/5 stars
Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Starring Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler
Rating M
Running time 105 minutes
Verdict Coming of age at its quirkiest
Originally published as Me Earl and the Dying Girl is a coming-of-age tale that will really grow on you
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