At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Me And Earl And The Dying Girl was the talk of the town, riding positive buzz all the way to awards glory (it took home both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize). The film is about a quiet high schooler who spends most of his time making short films with his best bud until he gets his world turned upside down when he encounters a classmate recently diagnosed with cancer. You’d be forgiven if that synopsis just made you scream, “The Fault In Our Stars!” but this dramedy has charms of its own. When our own A.A. Dowd caught it at the festival earlier this year, he called it, “an unusually energetic teen weepie, one that resists some of the clichés of its genre and invests the remaining ones with humor and poignancy.” Me And Earl And The Dying Girl opens in Chicago on June 12, but The A.V. Club and Fox Searchlight Pictures have an opportunity for you to see it for free on June 8. For your chance to win a pair of passes to the advance screening, simply follow the link here and enter the code MEDG550. As always, seats will be first come, first served, so be sure to arrive early. An official plot synopsis and trailer can be found below.
“Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is the uniquely funny, moving story of Greg (Thomas Mann), a high school senior who is trying to blend in anonymously, avoiding deeper relationships as a survival strategy for navigating the social minefield that is teenage life. He even describes his constant companion Earl (RJ Cyler), with whom he makes short film parodies of classic movies, as more of a ‘co-worker’ than a best friend. But when Greg’s mom (Connie Britton) insists he spend time with Rachel (Olivia Cooke) – a girl in his class who has just been diagnosed with cancer - he slowly discovers how worthwhile the true bonds of friendship can be.”