***This "review" contains spoiler alerts


It's not often that I find a movie that is better than it's book counter part, but after reading the young adult novel, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl, I can confirm that in fact, I have.  The book had potential; I mean the overall story line was good, the main characters had diverse personalities, and the author (Jesse Andrews) had good diction, but honestly, the book was trash.  The 304 pages not only lacked compassion, but the whole book was built on "white people problems."

So the story goes like this:

1. Greg = sad boy
2. Rachel = girl Greg knows
3. Rachel gets cancer
4. Greg's mom makes him hang with Rachel even though he doesn't want to
5. Greg hangs out with Rachel and makes it known that he doesn't want to be there
6. Earl = Greg's bff
7. Earl joins in on the visits
8. Rachel gets more sick
9. Rachel finds out that Greg and Earl are filmmakers
10. Greg and Earl make a film for her
11. Rachel dies
12. Greg finally develops feelings towards their friendship

What annoyed me was the fact that the main focus was on Greg, the sad white boy who not only has a poor, uneducated, black friend who smokes pot, lives in the ghetto, and has an alcoholic mom and a non present father (stereotypical character, by the way), but also a friend who is dying of leukemia, yet his problems are some how bigger.

Yet, the movie shed a different light, and allowed me to see the characters represented slightly different.  For example, Greg was more compassionate, Earl was less aggressive, and Rachel was more passive.  In this case, the movie tied the best parts of the book together.

So kudos to the director of Me and Earl and The Dying Girl, because you turned a piece of shit into a tolerable motion picture that may or may not have made me cry.