‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’ Delivers a Tale of Growth & Friendship

Sandra Miska

If you love a good tearjerker, but are sick of the typical sappy teen flicks, look no further than “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” a drama about three friends, one of whom has cancer, and their senior year of high school. “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” opens June 12.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” a film based on the novel of the same name by Jesse Andrews, contains, as the title suggests, some tragedy. “Dying Girl” Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke) receives a diagnosis of stage four cancer just as she begins her senior year of high school. However, this comedy-drama is really about the “Me” Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann), a classmate and neighbor of Rachel’s who befriends her at the behest of his mother (Connie Britton).

Greg begins his senior year with almost no goals, except for maybe staying invisible. He has managed to sort every one of his classmates into different groups, except himself, of course. He not only doesn’t have a regular table in the cafeteria, he avoids the cafeteria all together, instead preferring to eat lunch everyday in the office of his eccentric history teacher Mr. McCarthy (Jon Bernthal) along with his only confidant Earl (RJ Cyler).

Greg is so emotionally closed off that he can’t even bring himself to call Earl a friend. Instead, he refers to his alter ego as his “co-worker.” Greg and Earl “work” together to create horrible short films based on classics (i.e. “A Sockwork Orange,” “Senior Citizen Cane” and “2:48 Cowboy”), and much of the humor in the film come from glimpses of these masterpieces.

Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon had plenty of experience in the teen genre before taking on this film, having directed episode of “Glee,” “The Carrie Diaries” and “The Red Band Society.” Gomez-Rejon recently told Entertainment Voice that it was the different tome of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” that attracted him to the project.

“Everything felt different about this one. …What made this one so special was that I was personally invested in Greg. I really saw myself in him.”

Many young men (and women) will surely see themselves in Greg as he grows from the cool boy who doesn’t give a you-know-what into someone who does indeed care.

Ironically, it’s Greg’s lack of emotional investment that initially makes him an attractive friend for Rachel. Tired of having others fawning all over her and saying trite things, a dose of “Gregisil” turns out to be just what she needs.

“I like Greg’s approach,” said Gomez-Rejon. “You know everyone called [Rachel] and said ‘I’m sorry,’ you’ll make it through’… But Thomas just says, ‘I’m here because my mom’s making me.’”

“His honesty in certain situations is really refreshing,” Thomas Mann told Entertainment Voice when asked what quality of Greg’s he admires the most. “He sometimes says the things that I would probably be too afraid to say. He says the thing that you’re thinking, you know? I like that. I respond to honesty in any sort of person.”

A turning point for Greg is when he agrees to make a film for Rachel. This project allows him to not only grow as an artist, but also as a person because for the first time he’s making something for someone else. This project culminates in a powerful finale that will have viewers reaching for the tissues. Mann himself admitted to crying the first two times he saw the film at Sundance (He was over it by the third viewing).

Just don’t go the theater expecting to see “The Fault in Our Stars 2.” As Greg repeatedly reminds the audience through his voiceovers, his and Rachel’s story is not a romance. Their relationship is strictly platonic, something that Thomas Mann finds to be more realistic.

“I feel like there are kids who don’t relate to that. That don’t relate to having relationships in high school,” Mann said of teen romance. “I wanted to make a movie for the kids that I knew, more like the kid I was in high school. I think it’s something you can take part in, if [the characters] are friends, maybe you can be friends with them or you see yourself as one of them, but an onscreen romance is very separate from the audience. They don’t get to take part in it.”

Rounding out the cast of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” are two veteran comedic actors. Molly Shannon mixes comedy and tragedy perfectly as Rachel’s mother who deals with her pain by drinking heavily and flirting with Greg, and Nick Offerman is funny as always as Greg’s wacky dad whose academic job allows him lots of time to wander around at home in his robe and chow down on exotic foods.

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” opens June 12.