Olivia Cooke is likely one of the brightest younger stars within the enterprise, lighting up the display because the calculating Alicent Hightower on HBO’s Home of the Dragon and balancing big-budget tasks like Prepared Participant One with smaller indie fare just like the Oscar-nominated Sound of Steel. Now, she’s returning to the world of tv in Prime Video’s psychological thriller collection The Girlfriend, for what seems to be her most complicated position but.
However earlier than all these high-profile credit, Cooke broke out in an enormous means as Rachel Kushner, a highschool pupil preventing most cancers, within the 2015 indie dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Lady. Primarily based on the novel by Jesse Andrews (who additionally wrote the screenplay), the film was an enormous hit on the Sundance Movie Competition, snatched up by Fox Searchlight in a hefty bidding battle. It went on to obtain heat critiques and a good field workplace for an indie movie, although it additionally has its detractors and isn’t mentioned right this moment.
‘Me and Earl and the Dying Lady’s Teen Tearjerker
Me and Earl and the Dying Lady additionally stars Thomas Mann as Greg Gaines, a highschool senior who does not have too many pals past his shut relationship with the titular Earl (RJ Cyler). The 2 haven’t got a lot ambition past goofing off and making spoofs of basic motion pictures, inspired by their unconventional historical past instructor, Mr. McCarthy (Jon Bernthal).
Greg learns that his childhood good friend Rachel (Cooke) has been recognized with leukemia, and he is compelled by his loving mother and father (Nick Offerman and Connie Britton) to attempt to befriend her once more. After some preliminary awkwardness, the 2 begin to hit it off, and Greg brings her into his and Earl’s world. As Rachel’s situation worsens, Greg begins to neglect his research to assist her, placing his future school plans in jeopardy, in addition to his friendship with Earl.
Me and Earl and the Dying Lady was one in all many indie motion pictures from round that point to combine humor and tragedy, overlaying the entire thing in a thick veneer of self-aware mid-2010s quirk. Motion pictures like 2014’s The Fault in Our Stars, That is The place I Depart You, and 2013’s The Spectacular Now all trod related floor, spurred on by the indie movie increase that had begun a few decade earlier with motion pictures like Napoleon Dynamite and Backyard State. This fashion of movie, which tended to carry out very properly at Sundance, has largely fallen out of favor and can not help however really feel considerably dated from a contemporary perspective.
Whereas it was largely well-received on the time, it emerged at a second when American indie cinema was shifting away from these sorts of hipster-courting dramedies, making it extra a sufferer of poor timing than poor high quality. It has the most cancers plot of The Fault in Our Stars blended with the snarky, unreliable teen narrator of Juno, which can have been a mixture that was an excessive amount of for some folks. The movie is definitely a product of its time, however divorced from a number of the expectations surrounding its launch, it stays a worthy and sometimes fairly shifting expertise.
Why ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Lady’ Deserves To Be Remembered
One of many chief complaints about Me and Earl and the Dying Lady comes from one thing baked into the DNA of the guide and the film: that the story is advised largely from Greg’s perspective. To some, this made the character of Rachel little greater than a tool for Greg’s private development, moderately than a flesh-and-blood character along with her personal needs, wants, and wishes. This can be a legitimate criticism, however, as David Ehrlich argued in a 2015 essay for The Dissolve, there’s additionally a legitimate argument that this was intentional, for instance how little anybody can actually make sense of demise from their very own perspective.
It is comprehensible if that does not assuage the film’s detractors, however past that, there’s lots to love about it. Whereas her character may not get as a lot company as Greg, Cooke does glorious work as Rachel, going through down her personal mortality with a mixture of worry and readability that cuts proper by means of Greg’s self-mythologizing. Mann can be fairly good as Greg, unafraid to make him egocentric or self-loathing when crucial. Cyler’s Earl is a little more of a cypher, however his falling out and eventual reconciliation with Greg is a crucial reminder that, for as a lot as they’ve in frequent, there are elements of one another they cannot actually perceive.
The supporting solid all get moments to shine, particularly Bernthal’s small position as one of many “cool academics,” Offerman and Britton’s loving, usually exasperated mother and father, and a tremendously shifting flip from SNL vet Molly Shannon as Rachel’s mom. The performances do plenty of work to anchor the story in an comprehensible emotional actuality that balances the movie’s conspicuous fashion. The large climactic second, the place Greg and Earl display the film they made for Rachel in her hospital room shortly earlier than her demise, set to the chugging synths of Brian Eno’s “The Large Ship,” is undeniably highly effective.
Finally, Me and Earl and the Dying Lady was only one step in Cooke’s, Mann’s, and Cyler’s rising careers, all of which have flourished within the years since. However it’s a worthy movie in its personal proper, one which deserves to be remembered right this moment. On the very least, it makes for a enjoyable time capsule to a really totally different second in film historical past. You should buy or hire Me and Earl and the Dying Lady on Prime Video or Apple TV.