Can the hottest movie out of Sundance impress in the real world?!
You’re watching Beyond The Trailer’s review of Me Earl and the Dying Girl...
While Me Earl and the Dying Girl won both the US Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award
at Sundance, its chief competitor at the festival Dope isn’t going away. The two films are
being released within a week of each other, both hoping to make an impression before awards
season starts in earnest in the fall. Which will continue the Sundance legacy of Fruitvale
Station and Whiplash? Both? Neither? The stakes are high, as the entire reputation of not
just Sundance but indie filmmaking weighs heavily on their shoulders... The indie filmmaker
in question here is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Ryan Murphy’s protege who cut his teeth directing
on Murphy’s Glee and American Horror Story. He also made the craptastic horror film The
Town that Dreaded Sundown, but for obvious reasons Fox Searchlight is leaving that out
of his “narrative”. Me Earl and the Dying Girl also benefits from a screenplay by the
original book’s author, which always adds some cache ala Gillian Flynn with Gone Girl
and Stephen Chbosky with The Perks of Being a Wallflower - which Chbosky also directed.
Interestingly, Perks was filmed in Pittsburgh as is Earl, evidence of the city’s aggressive
tax incentives for film production. Warrior, The Dark Knight Rises, Jack Reacher, Grudge
Match and Out of the Furnace are just some of the most recent films shot in Pittsburgh.
Earl stars Olivia Cooke - hoping to break free from the horror genre after The Quiet
Ones and Ouija - as well as Project X’s Thomas Mann, Parks and Recreation’s Nick
Offerman, Nashville’s Connie Britton and The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal. Heck even
Bobb’e J Thompson resurfaces here! Plus there’s newcomer RJ Cyler as the eponymous
Earl. So, is Me Earl and the Dying Girl all that? Or just the hipster teen version of
Michel Gondry’s Be
Kind Rewind?