Film

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Name: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2015
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Connie Britton, Nick Offerman

Coming-of-age

A wry, visually inventive coming-of-age film narrated by a boy who insists it's not a cancer movie, and mostly gets away with it, right up until he doesn't. Told through deadpan voiceover, stop-motion doodles and lovingly amateur film parodies, it's about anonymity, awkward friendship, and the discomfort of being forced to care. Funny, formally playful, occasionally too pleased with its own cleverness, then quietly devastating.

TMDb rating

3.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love awkward, self-deprecating teenage narrators whose homemade movie parodies are as funny as their social failures, and you don't mind being moved sideways by a story that keeps its feelings slightly guarded.

Skip it if you want a straightforward illness drama with tears on cue; its jokes are dry and sideways, and its meta-film style can feel like cleverness aimed at itself.

What it asks of you: Roughly an hour and three-quarters, with a jumpy, stop-start rhythm and a steady willingness to sit in awkward silences rather than rush toward feeling.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Fault in Our Stars2014

If you want the same story played completely straight, teenage illness as tragic romance rather than comic deflection, this hits the same emotional target with none of the irony.

But The sincerity is total; if Greg's deflecting humor was the appeal, this earnest tone might feel like the opposite experience.

50/502011

Male friendship as the actual love story, cancer as the plot engine, and a script that earns its laughs without ever letting you forget what's at stake.

But The protagonist here is an adult with his own diagnosis, not a teenage bystander, so the fear is more personal and less about proximity to someone else's death.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower2012

Same era of adolescence, same anxious, hyper-observant narrator hiding behind other people's lives, this one just trades filmmaking for mixtapes and lets its wounds surface more slowly.

But It's gentler and more openly romantic, less interested in deflecting through jokes, more willing to just sit in the sadness.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Harold and Maude1971

Both are about a withdrawn young man who uses death, someone else's and his own morbid fascination with it, as the thing that finally cracks him open. This one just did it forty years earlier, with a hearse and a very different old lady.

A cult classic where a death-obsessed teenager befriends a 79-year-old free spirit; it's stranger, funnier, and more genuinely subversive than almost anything modern about mortality and youth.

But The tone is much darker and weirder, with mock suicides played for comedy, and its pacing is very much of its era.

Juno2007

Ellen Page's rapid-fire, deflective wit is basically Greg's defense mechanism in female form, a teenager narrating her way through a crisis she'd rather not feel.

But Pregnancy comedy instead of illness drama means the stakes and tone land somewhere lighter and more comfortably resolved.

The Spectacular Now2013

Same aching, specific high-school melancholy and the same refusal to tie things up neatly, a quieter, more romantic cousin to Greg's story.

But Alcoholism, not cancer, is the wound underneath, so the shape of the sadness is different even if the ache feels familiar.

Submarine2011

A British teenager who narrates his own life like he's directing a film about it, complete with cinematic pastiche and painful self-awareness, Greg's spiritual twin, just crueler and funnier.

But It's colder and more arch, with none of the grief; if you came for the emotional gut-punch ending, this won't give you one.

Paper Towns2015

Another John Green teen story, another awkward narrator obsessed with a girl he's turned into more of an idea than a person, worth it if that dynamic got under your skin.

But It's a mystery road-trip film with lighter stakes, no illness plot, and a much sunnier resolution.

It's Kind of a Funny Story2010

Comedy and mental illness handled with the same instinct as here, humor as survival tactic, an outsider narrator, a supporting cast of oddballs who become unexpectedly moving.

But The setting is a psychiatric ward, not a cancer ward, so the crisis at its center is different in kind, not just degree.

Garden State2004

The granddaddy of the wistful indie dramedy with a killer soundtrack and a numbed narrator slowly waking up to feeling things; you can feel its DNA all over this one.

But It's more romance than friendship story, and its whimsy hasn't aged as gracefully for every viewer.

American Movie1999

Greg and Earl's scrappy, lovingly terrible homemade films are basically a fictional stand-in for this real documentary about two broke friends in Wisconsin trying to make a horror movie against all odds.

A real, hilarious, oddly moving documentary about amateur filmmaking, friendship, and stubborn creative delusion, the actual thing the fictional film subplot here is quietly in love with.

But No teenagers, no illness, no polish; it's a low-budget nonfiction film about adults, and the humor comes from real dysfunction, not scripted wit.

A Monster Calls2016

Same central situation, a kid, a dying parent, denial as a coping strategy, stripped of jokes and rebuilt as dark fantasy. If you want to know what this story looks like with the deflection removed, watch this.

A boy processes his mother's terminal illness through a monster made of stories and grief; visually stunning, unbearably sad, and completely unafraid of just sitting in the pain.

But There's no comic relief here at all, it's a genuinely heavy, occasionally frightening film that will wreck you rather than balance you out.