The prospect of a Sundance-wowing indie take on the themes of The Fault in Our Stars or Now Is Good sounds irksome beyond words, but Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s very likable film confounds both expectations and prejudices. Thomas Mann is dorky geek Greg, instructed by his mum to spend time with Rachel (Olivia Cooke) who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia, a task that turns from burden to blessing in time-honoured fashion. But, as Greg’s deadpan voiceover keeps telling us, this is not a love story; rather, it is a tale of mismatched friendships of the kind that once fired John Hughes’s teen movies.
Greg and Rachel rattle along, but the most intriguing character is RJ Cyler’s titular Earl, the “co-worker” (Greg is scared of the word “friend”) with whom our unreliable narrator makes such cine-literate movie spoofs as Pooping Tom, Brew Vervet and A Sockwork Orange. Michel Gondry-esque excerpts from these mini opuses pepper the tragicomic narrative, establishing a cute, off-kilter tone that filters through the main feature.
Adapting his own 2012 young adult novel, first-time screenwriter Jesse Andrews walks a fine line between the literary and the cinematic, studiously sidestepping mawkishness without recourse to emotional detachment.
