Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 1.0
High school student Greg (Thomas Mann, not the author of Buddenbrooks) - who makes parodies of various movies with his "coworker" Earl (a very funny RJ Cyler) - is forced (literally) by his Mother (Connie Britton) to befriend neighborhood acquaintance Rachel (Olivia Cooke) who was recently diagnosed with leukemia. It goes back to the old quote by Pauline Kael about how we're raising and producing filmmakers who know everything about film and little about life - this is very much a movie about movies, not about the nuances of human interaction and relationships. Little rings remotely true - it's too consumed with its own precociousness - as Greg's 'friendship' with Rachel is artificial (the two never develop romantic feelings for each other despite spending so much time together), Greg 'making movies' with Earl comes across as a chore (they create the parodies just to kill time, it seems, and don't appear to enjoy doing them) and Rachel's death (which the narrator lies and says won't happen, which is a cruel trick on the audience) feels just another 'quirky' event in the plot (she goes into a coma while watching an experimental movie the guys made). I suspect Rachel's death is intended to "awaken" Greg out of his numb state and start to "feel" something about humanity (and the tragic loss of life), but somehow I doubt it.
