Delayed Reaction: Me Before You

The Pitch: Dying Young really needs to be more British.

Why did I watch this? It was the 58th highest grossing movie of last year, safely outside my Club 50 threshold. It got no award attention of any sort*. It's 'rotten' on Rotten Tomatoes**. This isn't even the kind of movie I normally like. I'm pretty sure I saw this because I wanted something I could ignore if I needed to, I like watching and listening to attractive British people, and Game of Thrones renewed my interest in if Emilia Clarke is likely to have a movie career after it finishes.

*Because I don't could awards with "People's", "Teen", and/or "MTV" in the title.

**53%, which sounds like it would be barely above average, but I actually checked the numbers as part of  another project and found that the average rating on RT in 2016 was 68%, making this well below average.

I'm convinced that Clarke can be an action movie star. Her best moments on GoT are her big "Mother of Dragons" moments. She's somewhat wooden the rest of the time, although I'm never sure how much of that is due to the character or writing. And, she was the very good in the appropriately maligned Terminator: Genisys. Me Before You is a big departure from all that though. She's very charming though and has nice chemistry with Sam Claflin. Honestly, I just got annoyed by how much the film tried to make her an odd duck. It's not quite to the level of movies that make a super model be clumsy as a way to make her seem approachable, but it isn't that far off. At some point, you just have to accept that the lead in the movie is smokin'. I'm still not convinced that she's any sort of chameleon who can crossover into numerous genres, but she's not bad in this.

OK, real talk for a second. There's this group of British actors who I legitimately could not pick out of a lineup if I tried. Henry Cavill is a big one for me. I've seen him in many things, even in distinctive roles. I should know his face, but I don't. Sam Claflin is the same. I've seen more than half of his feature films and still forget his face as soon as he leaves the screen. After I've seen him so many times, I should have a better recollection. For example, I even made this picture, and I can't identify which is which.

The rest of the cast is fun though. I know Janet McTeer more by name than from an association to any specific role. Charles Dance has a long and storied career that isn't defined by any one role, but I still couldn't ignore the meta fun of Tywin Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen sharing the screen together. Oh, and Jenna Coleman. She's pretty. She's charming and I'd like to see her in some non-sidekick roles (I'd really rather not track down Victoria), but for a role this small, it's enough if she's just pretty and gets along with Emilia Clarke.

The movie itself is OK. Apparently, there was some uproar over the perceived message that disabled people are a nuisance who should just kill themselves. That's a fairly legitimate complaint to make about the movie, although the film does make this fully Claflin's character's decision as a response to his own unhappiness. There's only so much the movie can do to make it clear that it's a specific case and not a sweeping generalization about disabled people. The film could've underlined the point about his inevitably declining health a little better, because Claflin's condition is prettied-up considerably. Even still if you accept the handling of all that, the movie leads to the question of the morality of assisted suicide. Basically, the whole movie is one controversy land mine after another.

The film isn't bad and certainly will appeal to some audiences more than me. It wasn't really equipped to handle the more dramatic elements in the story, and the romantic parts didn't sizzle enough to make up for that.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend.