DA_Champion
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Me Before You (2016), Romantic comedy
Director: Thea Sharrock
Starring: Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin
IMDB: 7.8/10 (for now)
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
I went to see the new romantic comedy, Me Before You, with some friends tonight. It starred Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) as Louisa Clarke, and Sam Claflin (played Finnick in the Hunger Games movies) as William Traynor.
I liked the movie, but I'll dismissively mention the tropes first.
It's a classic beauty and the beast tale, a standard format of women's fantasy romance lit, also Twilight folllows that format. In this case William Traynor is a "beast" because he is a depressed quadriplegic (motorcycle accident) who wants to end his life. Can she fall in love with the beast and thus unlock the prince within?
The other one is a love triangle. Louisa Clarke is actually with this other man Patrick at the start. How can she reconcile her new love when she already has a boyfriend she would have to leave behind?
In spite of these cliches, the movie works well, it's really funny and sweet in parts, a lot of it rings true. I smiled a lot.
Will is totally depressed at the start, as he should be given that he was the man who had everything. Aside from being very good-looking and rich, we learn throughout the movie how charming and smart he is. However, he's depressed because he's not the man he once was. His mother wants to hire a personal assistant to help him with his tasks, which is how Louisa enters the picture. It's clear that William's mother is not hiring Louisa because she's the most qualified for care of a quadripalegic (she's not), she's being hired because she's beautiful, and on some level she hopes her son will start pursuing her and that will give him back a spark to his life. During the job interview, Louisa's skirt rips yielding a slit, it's supposed to be an innocent thing and of course it could happen, but really it reminds the audience how gorgeous she is ... William's mother is throwing everything she can to revive her son psychologically. I think that's a good bet.
Overtime William wakes up. Not because she tries to make him happy (that does help later on), but she exercises her own agency and personhood, she says she needs the job for the money and she talks about why she doesn't want to go to London. She's finding the prince within the beast by being a person.
This is in contrast with her current boyfriend, Patrick, who is a foil to William, and a bit too stupid for the sake of credulity. This guy is really dumb, you kind of need to see the movie to get what I'm saying. Patrick doesn't seem to see a person in Louisa, only a woman who can support him in his aspirations. His idea of a romantic vacation together is her going with him to Norway so he can run some sort of Viking Triathlon. He shows up to her birthday 28 minutes late bragging that he ran 6km (was it 6 miles?) in 28 minutes. He gives her a necklace with his name on it. He's all about him, and he spends a lot of time whining. He's also a foil to William in other ways. Whereas William is the full package in all ways except his quadripalegia, all Patrick has to offer is a fit body. Patrick has a great body but kind of a dumb face, it's hard to explain I'm not sure what the makeup artists did to pull off that effect. Patrick is into running, triathlons, we see him wear exercise gear all the time, and he works as a personal trainer. When he meets William, he offers him exercise tips ... never offer exercise tips to a quadripalegic you clueless moron. Later on Patrick gets one moment of glory. He prepares a sweet romantic dinner for Louisa ... and then he ruins it by bragging that the dinner comes in under 300 calories. It's really funny when it happens in the movie because by that point Patrick has become pathetic comedy relief. We don't feel sorry for him as he doesn't deserve empathy since he himself doesn't see a person in Louisa.
Overall this movie is quite sweet. I liked it, though maybe not as much as I liked my favourite rom-coms: Dirty Dancing and The Fault in Our Stars. There's a lot that rings true and sweet, for example there's a great scene where they're both on William's wheelchair at a wedding, which follows another great scene where Louisa gets some gossip from an older lady from within that social circle. Emilia Clarke gets great dialogue, she goes on these adorable rants.
Two physical asides:
- I wonder if Emilia Clarke was wearing contact lens. Her eyes were blue on the outside and brown on the inside, too perfect to be real?
- Emilia Clarke is really skilled at moving her eyebrows in various ways;
I notice it has a pitiful 43% on rotten tomatoes, which continues a trend I'm noticing anecdotal (no proper scientific survey) whereby movies directed by women or aimed at women are more likely to be massacred by the critics. I mentioned some tropes above. It may be that when critics see these tropes in a chick flick they scoff, whereas when they see tropes in an action film they gauge it as a successful indulgence.
Grade: B+
Director: Thea Sharrock
Starring: Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin
IMDB: 7.8/10 (for now)
Rotten Tomatoes: 43%
I went to see the new romantic comedy, Me Before You, with some friends tonight. It starred Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) as Louisa Clarke, and Sam Claflin (played Finnick in the Hunger Games movies) as William Traynor.
I liked the movie, but I'll dismissively mention the tropes first.
It's a classic beauty and the beast tale, a standard format of women's fantasy romance lit, also Twilight folllows that format. In this case William Traynor is a "beast" because he is a depressed quadriplegic (motorcycle accident) who wants to end his life. Can she fall in love with the beast and thus unlock the prince within?
The other one is a love triangle. Louisa Clarke is actually with this other man Patrick at the start. How can she reconcile her new love when she already has a boyfriend she would have to leave behind?
In spite of these cliches, the movie works well, it's really funny and sweet in parts, a lot of it rings true. I smiled a lot.
Will is totally depressed at the start, as he should be given that he was the man who had everything. Aside from being very good-looking and rich, we learn throughout the movie how charming and smart he is. However, he's depressed because he's not the man he once was. His mother wants to hire a personal assistant to help him with his tasks, which is how Louisa enters the picture. It's clear that William's mother is not hiring Louisa because she's the most qualified for care of a quadripalegic (she's not), she's being hired because she's beautiful, and on some level she hopes her son will start pursuing her and that will give him back a spark to his life. During the job interview, Louisa's skirt rips yielding a slit, it's supposed to be an innocent thing and of course it could happen, but really it reminds the audience how gorgeous she is ... William's mother is throwing everything she can to revive her son psychologically. I think that's a good bet.
Overtime William wakes up. Not because she tries to make him happy (that does help later on), but she exercises her own agency and personhood, she says she needs the job for the money and she talks about why she doesn't want to go to London. She's finding the prince within the beast by being a person.
This is in contrast with her current boyfriend, Patrick, who is a foil to William, and a bit too stupid for the sake of credulity. This guy is really dumb, you kind of need to see the movie to get what I'm saying. Patrick doesn't seem to see a person in Louisa, only a woman who can support him in his aspirations. His idea of a romantic vacation together is her going with him to Norway so he can run some sort of Viking Triathlon. He shows up to her birthday 28 minutes late bragging that he ran 6km (was it 6 miles?) in 28 minutes. He gives her a necklace with his name on it. He's all about him, and he spends a lot of time whining. He's also a foil to William in other ways. Whereas William is the full package in all ways except his quadripalegia, all Patrick has to offer is a fit body. Patrick has a great body but kind of a dumb face, it's hard to explain I'm not sure what the makeup artists did to pull off that effect. Patrick is into running, triathlons, we see him wear exercise gear all the time, and he works as a personal trainer. When he meets William, he offers him exercise tips ... never offer exercise tips to a quadripalegic you clueless moron. Later on Patrick gets one moment of glory. He prepares a sweet romantic dinner for Louisa ... and then he ruins it by bragging that the dinner comes in under 300 calories. It's really funny when it happens in the movie because by that point Patrick has become pathetic comedy relief. We don't feel sorry for him as he doesn't deserve empathy since he himself doesn't see a person in Louisa.
Overall this movie is quite sweet. I liked it, though maybe not as much as I liked my favourite rom-coms: Dirty Dancing and The Fault in Our Stars. There's a lot that rings true and sweet, for example there's a great scene where they're both on William's wheelchair at a wedding, which follows another great scene where Louisa gets some gossip from an older lady from within that social circle. Emilia Clarke gets great dialogue, she goes on these adorable rants.
Two physical asides:
- I wonder if Emilia Clarke was wearing contact lens. Her eyes were blue on the outside and brown on the inside, too perfect to be real?
- Emilia Clarke is really skilled at moving her eyebrows in various ways;
I notice it has a pitiful 43% on rotten tomatoes, which continues a trend I'm noticing anecdotal (no proper scientific survey) whereby movies directed by women or aimed at women are more likely to be massacred by the critics. I mentioned some tropes above. It may be that when critics see these tropes in a chick flick they scoff, whereas when they see tropes in an action film they gauge it as a successful indulgence.
Grade: B+
