Me and Earl and the Dying Girl * * * * 1/2

There have been so many films on people dying of cancer that it is virtually a genre in its own right. There is even room for a sub-genre - teenagers dying of cancer. You can’t believe they keep making them. But they do. Probably because it is something we can all relate to. So ubiquitous is this awful terminal illness most of us have been touched by it and lost someone we know.  Which got me thinking - why isn't there a genre on car-crashes? Most of us have been touched by that too. I think the reason is, the loved one is gone in an instant and the drama could then only be on the living, not the one who is leaving.

These cancer films have a predictable formula. The healthy pre-sickness, the announcement, the shock, then the sadness of the long goodbye.

So every time another one comes along I tend to avoid it, which is why it took me so long to go see Me and Earl and The Dying Girl. But I wish I’d gone earlier rather than its final days at the cinema.  It’s been showing for about 2 months now and is just about to finish.  But you’ll be able to pick it up on DVD.

It's an very inventive film that handles the subject like no other cancer film.  It is not frivolous or insensitive about this disease, you are aware of the awfulness of it, but it handles it quite differently. The emphasis is on Greg, who starts off not really interested in Rachel, the dying girl. His mother kind of nags him into going to see her.

Greg and his friend Earl make movies of movies together and their puppet recreations of classic films is worth going to see alone.  They’re hysterically funny. With encouragement they make a film for Rachel. 
When someone we love is dying we tend to lie a lot to keep our spirits up. “She’ll be okay”.  (No she won’t!) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl lies to us too and we can see that it is. The other thing I liked about this is that there is barely a white-coat in sight.  It’s just the immediate people in Greg's life who are all beautifully weird (I liked them!)

Aside from a quirky and quite funny script, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl offers some of the best cinematography I have ever seen.  It is so creative it is like another narrative, a second telling of the story.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a very fine film. I wished I'd got to it sooner. Don't make the same mistake. Go see!