This tremendous dramedy about awkward teens won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance and that's just the beginning. We loved it. It's hilarious, it's moving, it's insightful, and it has clever and artful touches too numerous to list, including wonderful fodder for film geeks. "Me" is Greg, played by Thomas Mann (he played the lead's best friend in It's Kind of a Funny Story, and anyone who loves this one should see that one). Greg's best friend Earl is played by RJ Cyler, who has but one other credit that I didn't see. The dying girl is Rachel, diagnosed in the first five minutes with leukemia, and played in a many-layered performance by Olivia Cooke (new to me), who happens to be English but you'd never know it. Connie Britton (last blogged in This Is Where I Leave You) and Nick Offerman (most recently in these pages for In a World... after 125 episodes of Parks and Recreation) are Greg's earnest and quirky parents, respectively. Molly Shannon (some of my favorites of her work include Happiness (1998), Analyze This (1999), Never Been Kissed (1999), Superstar (1999), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006), and Year of the Dog (2007), but you probably know her best from 117 episodes of Saturday Night Live from 2005-2010) provides a few uncomfortable laughs as Rachel's mom and Jon Bernthal (first came to my attention as a regular in the mediocre series The Class of which I watched every one, then was in several other serieses and movies before being seventh-billed in The Wolf of Wall Street) has passion and tattoos as a favorite teacher whose motto is "Respect the research."
The other day I heard novelist Jesse Andrews talking about his 2012 book (he also wrote the screenplay) and telling the audience that the novel The Fault in Our Stars, which is also about a teenage cancer patient, came out the same year and that movie was released last year. We didn't see that one, maybe because there were no laughs in the trailer. I will mention here that in looking for the soundtrack (see below) I came upon this movie's tumblr page, on which someone posted that Earl and his family are stereotypical black people, and I can't really argue that that may be true, but still it may be the movie's only flaw.
Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon started as an intern, then personal assistant to the likes of Martin Scorsese and Alejandro González Iñárritu (who are among the celebrities in the acknowledgments) and has moved up through some Emmy nominations to this, his second gig as a feature director.
The production design team, led by Gerald Sullivan (so many great credits) deserves props (see how I did that?) for the aforementioned artful touches. Also, Greg and Earl love to remake classic movies as short subjects using themselves, animation, and punny titles, and they're very funny.
Brian Eno (last blogged for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) and Nico Muhly (Kill Your Darlings) provide a wonderful score, supplemented by many songs, including themes from Greg and Earl's movie shorts. You can stream the soundtrack here or cherry-pick from this list.
I'm so glad Jack and I got to this today. Rotten Tomatoes' critics are coming in at 82% and its audiences at 90. Go see it. Stay for the credits and try to read all the spoof movie titles.
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