A movie about high school students dealing with mortality — haven’t we been dipping into that well a lot lately? So the surprise was the laughs when Me and Earl and The Dying Girl became the surprise smash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Here was a film that managed to be at once earnest and flip, capturing teen angst without wallowing in teen drama.
The opening shots introduce us to Greg (Thomas Mann), a dweeby high school senior who’s perfected the wisecrack as a substitute for social interaction. A member of no clique, he’s on friendly terms with everyone from jocks to goths to geeks because he only half-engages, zooming down a hall, hearing a snatch of conversation like, say, “your test was today?” and offering a bit of snark — “ugh, tests, been there” — without breaking stride.
His one close buddy, Earl (RJ Cyler), he’s known forever. They bonded as kids while watching Greg’s dad’s film collection, and then coming up with punny titles for movie parodies — A Sockwork Orange, Senior-Citizen Kane — they make with household detritus and toys.
But being jokey and making videos does not prepare Greg for news his mother gives him about a classmate with leukemia — Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who’d been talking tests in that school hallway. Greg cringes when he realizes what tests she meant.