Greg is a character in the tradition of Molly Ringwald’s bohemian princess in Sixteen Candles and Jason Schwartzman’s restless preppie wannabe in Rushmore. Me and Earl owes a great deal to the latter film, though with an added sentimental hook: it’s The Fault in Our Stars if made by a young Wes Anderson. Greg starts hanging out with Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a girl in his class who is fighting leukemia. From the start, though, the friendship is true blue, since Rachel, a stinging waif, is the only girl at school who shares Greg’s talent for witticismsvirtual office. “She’s, like, the LeBron James of nagging,” says Greg of his smothering mother, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl glides along on ‘clever’ zingers like thatreenex cps .

Based on a novel by Jesse Andrews (who also wrote the screenplay), Me and Earl is jammed with cute, acerbic conceits, Andersonian camera movement and characters that skirt the edge of absurdity – like Greg’s professor dad, who spends all day gathering and cooking odd foods, or a tattooed teacher who may be slipping drugs into his daily thermos of Vietnamese soup. Greg also has a fast-talking friend, Earl (RJ Cyler); the two are movie maniacs who film their own variations on classic cinema, which gives the movie a chance to do cheeky riffs on everything from the mystique of Midnight Cowboy to the persona of Werner Herzog. These mini movies are a kick, yet as enjoyable as Me and Earl can be, the film, like its hero, could have used a little less self-congratulatory coynessreenex cps.