Here at The Comeback, a recurring feature called “The Millennial Review” has had young people reviewing movies like Top Gun and Point Break, classics that were released so long ago that it was before the millennials’ time. In the spirit of equal time, I, an old, will spend part of the summer reviewing movies (and other things) geared toward the millennial.
Last week, it was the 2014 hit The Fault In Our Stars. This week, it is the 2015 not-a-hit Me And Earl And The Dying Girl.
Despite being old, very few things make me feel old. For instance, take EDM music. I don’t get it. Young people seem to love it. But as a young person, there were musical genres I didn’t enjoy, so seeing men and women in their 20s writhing around to what sounds like a modem dialup having sex with a fax machine trying to connect to a phone line has no effect on me.
Here’s what makes me feel old: this new genre of movies about dying teens.
Back in my day, teen movies were about skipping school and going to prom and losing your virginity. Today? The teen movies are about young people dying of cancer. Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel ranked 18 teen death movies (and had The Fault In Our Stars ranked second, which is waaaaaaaaaay too high) and 10 of those 18 have come out since 2010. That list is from 2014, so it doesn’t include Me And Earl.
I don’t know what’s happening in high school these days but the world could use a few more movies about teens trying to fit in instead of teens coming to grips with their mortality while partaking in chemotherapy. Since 2010, there are just as many teen death movies (11) as Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (11). There’s something disturbing about that. How far away are we from an Avengers movie where Tony Stark has to save Spider-Man from cancer?
So how does Me And Earl stack up against TFIOS? Excellent question. Let’s discuss.
THE PLOT
Greg is a self-hating introvert with only one real friend, Earl. Greg is so afraid of any kind of true emotional connection that he refers to Earl as his “co-worker” despite them being friends since childhood. Greg is sort of like Gus from TFIOS in that he’s a closed-off weirdo but at no point does he lie to a girl dying of cancer so he can have sex with her, so already he’s way ahead of the game.
Greg and Earl are amateur filmmakers. More on this later, because it’s great.
Rachel is the titular dying girl. She dies.
Greg’s mom forces him to befriend Rachel when she’s diagnosed with leukemia. It’s basically her way of pushing Greg into friendship, although doing it with someone who is inevitably going to die is sort of mean. Anyway, after some resistance, they become friends.
This is usually the part where I make jokes about how horrible some of the characters are but I just finished watching this movie about 20 minutes ago and it’s hard to be snarky when you only stopped crying 19 minutes ago.
LIFE IS NOT FAIR
Me And Earl is superior to TFIOS in every way. It’s funnier, sweeter, more real, and I’m not saying it presents watching someone slowly die of cancer in a more devastating way but I just needed 15 minutes to compose myself after writing the previous section because I had some residual crying to do.
TFIOS made $125 million; Me And Earl made $6.8 million.
TFIOS hung with superhero movies in 2014 while Me And Earl earned 900,000 fewer dollars than Mortdecai. That’s the only thing sadder than Rachel dying.
My theory is everyone went to see TFIOS expecting great things based on the book and instead were so crushed with disappointment that they pledged to never see a teen cancer movie ever again.
TEEN CANCER = COMEDY
This is a weird thing to write, but this movie about an innocent teen girl slowly dying of cancer over the course of a year made me laugh a lot. It’s funny! I don’t know anything about writer Jesse Andrews but I hope this isn’t a one-off thing and he writes more movies, hopefully ones that aren’t about dying teens.
There are three genuinely funny aspects that make this sad movie weirdly rewatchable.
- Greg and Earl accidentally get high. They don’t do anything like you’d expect in a 1980s movie. They don’t stumble into a girls locker room and watch the girls shower but they basically get high and visit Rachel. It’s great.
- Greg’s dad is a lunatic. Nick Offerman loves his cat way too much and he’s a matter-of-fact way of dealing with things, like his idiot son.
And 3. deserves its own quick recap, so…
GREG AND EARL ARE PUN-BASED FILMMAKERS
If I could go back in time and redo high school, I’d be Greg. Tall, not all that attractive, sorta knows everyone but isn’t really dying to hang out with anyone, become friends with a dying girl to learn a life lesson. Only Greg one-upped me by making films based entirely on puns. Greg and Earl are geniuses.
The premise is that you take a movie (American History X) turn it into a pun (America History T-Rex) and then make a movie based on the pun where a white supremacist dinosaur goes to prison and learns the error of his ways.
The beauty of watching a year-old movie means I didn’t have to write down all the puns in this movie. ScreenPrism did it for me. These are my five favorite movies from the movie.
Eyes Wide Butt — Eyes Wide Shut
Crouching Housecat, Hidden Housecat — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Scabface — Scarface
Pooping Tom — Peeping Tom
A Box O’ Lips, Wow — Apocalypse, Now
That last one slays me. I love this movie.
BACK TO ALL THE DYING
So Rachel, man, she’s dying. There’s maybe one scene in TFIOS that shakes you up, when douchebag Gus breaks down at the gas station while he’s out buying a pack of his dumbass metaphorical cigarettes. TFIOS has no emotional core and is so much fluff that you can spread it on your peanut butter sandwich and eat it.
The last 45 minutes or so of Me And Earl are tough. In TFIOS, Gus and Hazel have a dumb fight and for like a minute, they are apart. But Gus is so determined to have sex that he stays with it. In Me And Earl, Greg and Rachel have a fight and you genuinely think she may die before Greg comes to his idiot senses.
Unlike in TFIOS, the movie starts with a bunch of kids in a terminal cancer support group, so you know what’s up. With Rachel, they present her leukemia as NBD and odds are she will be fine. The only reason you know she’s going to die is because this is a teen death movie with “Dying Girl” in the title. But watching her slip away and get worse is … hold on, crying again. Next subsection.
TFIOS vs. ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
Back in my day, Hollywood tended to release similar movies right on top of each other, meaning they would be forever compared. Armageddon vs. Deep Impact. Mission To Mars vs. Red Planet. Dante’s Peak vs. Inferno. Hell, somehow there are two movies about Steve Prefontaine. Stuff was weirder when I was in my 20s.
Now, it happens less. But when it does, it’s about freaking teens slowly dying of cancer. I don’t know how or why but here we are.
So which movie is superior? It’s obvious, but let’s break it down anyway.
Gus vs. Greg: Both are dicks in their own way but at no point does Greg troll a terminal cancer support group for ass. Advantage: Greg.
Hazel vs. Rachel: Rachel doesn’t guilt her parents into taking her to Amsterdam to meet some book author. Advantage: Rachel.
Hazel’s parents vs. Rachel’s mom: This is the heart of why TFIOS is such a waste of a movie. Molly Shannon is very good as a single mom watching her daughter die. She has a drink in her hand in every scene as she puts on a brave face. Hazel’s parents are all like, hey, go meet a boy, yo, I’m cool. I know pot. Or whatever. Advantage: Rachel’s mom.
Gus’ parents vs. Greg’s parents: I’m still not positive that Gus’ parents were even real people. Advantage: Greg’s parents.
Isaac vs. Earl: A) I’m just now realizing the blind kid in TFIOS is named EYE-SICK and B) while Earl is funny, Isaac is the best part of his movie. Advantage: Isaac.
Sadness vs. sadness: It’s like TFIOS is a cancer movie that doesn’t want to be a cancer movie. Just knowing I’m about to type some words about the final scene in Rachel’s hospital room is causing my throat to close up and I can’t see this screen so good because my eyes are watering and let’s just stop here. Advantage: Me And Earl.
FINALLY, SOME STRAY THOUGHTS
• I’m really mad that Rachel is dead.
• I have no way to know if this is shade being tossed at TFIOS, but there’s a wide shot of a classroom that has an odd area rug that I’ve never seen in a high school class. I wonder if it’s an inside joke about the rug in TFIOS, a bad movie filled with bad metaphors.
• This is the best Claymation-based joke about “the hot girl from Pussy Riot” and Vietnamese food you’ll ever see in a movie.
• I’m not even kidding about how sad I am about Rachel. Why did she go off her medicine?! Why?!?!? Go be with her, Greg!
• In an odd deviation from TFIOS, no one in this movie makes out in a room where a teen girl hid from the Nazis.
• And finally, this movie will always have my respect because after the super-sad final scene when Rachel dies, I thought of a great joke. I planned to use it here. Alas, I was beaten to it by a superior writer.
• I don’t know why Teen Cancer Death is a new genre of film, but this is easily the best of the bunch. I will now go back to sobbing into my sexy pillow.
