ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL: Trailer For The Sundance Smash

I missed Me and Earl and the Dying Girl because its very premise - two high school slackers who make shitty versions of Criterion Collection movies befriend a girl dying of leukemia - makes me ill. But everybody loved it, and now I'm the guy who didn't see one of the big Sundance smashes (although I saw The Witch and Tangerine, so I've already seen two of the year's best movies). The trailer, though, does not make me regret missing the film, as it looks exactly like the sort of twee thing I dreaded. What's more, it looks like a movie that's about people who live life at a remove - ie, movie fans - and gosh do I not find those stories compelling. On top of it all the idea of 'How does this other person's horrible, tragic experience impact ME?' to be the kind of solipsistic thinking that will grind our society into paste. 

But hey! Everybody else loved it. People wept at it, and a lot of folks said it was their favorite film of the fest. If it weren't for that marquee-busting title I'd say it looks crazy commercial, and even with that long title it'll probably clean up with the quirk crowd and the 20 year old bloggers who think that because they have seen a bunch of Melville movies they know something about the world and cinema. There's something to be said for schmaltz aimed at the pretentious crowd - that's an underserved niche.