Cinemazlowski “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" is a selfless tale of true friendship

Anyone lucky enough to have been around in the 1980s regarded it as the greatest era of teen movies ever, as John Hughes served up classics like "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and Cameron Crowe bookended the decade with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Say Anything." These were movies that treated teens with respect, showing both the humorous highs and the angst-filled lows of high school life in a way that resonated universally with viewers.

 

Things have changed a lot in the decades since, with dreary dystopian fantasies like "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent" series being the most successful teen movies being released nowadays. Just when it seemed like it's time to give up hope of ever seeing a teen movie that doesn't center on kids having to kill each other to win a competition, along comes the funny, touching and profound new movie "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl."

 

The winner of both the critic and audience awards for best film at this year's Sundance Film Festival, "Me and Earl" follows a Pittsburgh-area boy named Greg (Thomas Mann), who has little self-esteem and tries to just sneak through life at his high school by being just friendly enough with every social group. He has only one friend, an African-American boy named Earl (RJ Cyler), and the two spend most of their free time filming ridiculous spoofs of famous movies.

 

One day Greg's mom tells him that a girl named Rachel (Olivia Cooke) that he barely knows has been diagnosed with leukemia. She orders Greg to go befriend Rachel and help bring joy into her life, since he's so easygoing. Greg feels he'll be rejected and doesn't want to do it at first, but he gives it a try and he and Rachel find that they hit it off immediately.

 

This is the point where a thousand other teenage movies would make Earl and Rachel fall in love, but this is one movie that refuses to follow the easy path in any direction. Writer Jesse Andrews (adapting his own hit young adult novel) and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon use unconventional elements like stop-motion animation to bring Greg's internal thoughts to life, while the interspersed clips from Greg and Earl's spoofs also offer an inventive and humorous counterpoint to the overall sadness of the story.

 

But what's truly unique about the film is the fact that Greg and Rachel never fall in love, as neither one of them is attracted to each other romantically, even as they become the best of friends. To see a teen story play out where the cliché's of prom night dates or first sexual encounters aren't front and center is a refreshing change of pace. These are kids dealing with low self-esteem and death, but help each other through these issues with humor and grace.

 

 "Me and Earl" is also refreshing in its depiction of the relationships between the kids and their parents, with veteran actors Connie Britton, Nick Offerman and Molly Shannon all given meaty roles that transcend the usual teen movie clichés of portraying parents as being clueless adversaries. It's a film filled with characters whom audiences will relate to and fall in love with, and these veteran actors are clearly thrilled to be sinking their teeth into meaningful material.

 

But it's the film's trio of young stars who are truly magic, in the kind of breakout performances that launch major careers. Mann is a terrific Everyman, giving Greg a combination of humor and heart that could easily make him this generation's John Cusack, while Cyler plays Earl with a mix of world-weariness and droll with that makes him seem decades wiser than his years.

 

Yet it's Cooke who has to win us over the most as we follow her long day's journey into night with as much light as her spirit can find.  She gives a performance for the ages, in a film that stands an excellent chance of being a major Oscar contender.

 

The movie is rated PG-13 for one F word, and about 30 or so S words scattered throughout, plus about 10 uses of God's name in vain, including about 5 GD's and one or two JC's. Greg also jokes crudely about masturbation in two scenes, but of course nothing is shown. However, anyone who has ever known a teenager knows that they hear this kind of language all the time and it would be a shame to keep any teen away from a movie that emphasizes friendship between boys and girls rather than sex, and which portrays an utterly selfless and beautiful tale of true friendship and caring for a fellow human being.

 

The movie never directly deals with religion or Christianity, but that display of selflessness is one of the finest displays of Christian love for others I've ever seen on screen in a mainstream Hollywood movie.

 

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" opens today, Friday June 12 in New York and Los Angeles, and will be open nationwide by July 3.