Because I’m a poor college student with no money and no means of transportation, I rarely make it out to the movie theater. Redbox rentals it is. I may not be up-to-date on what’s playing in theaters, but wait a few months and I’ll let you know if the movie’s worth the dollar fifty rental fee.
****Obligatory Spoiler Alert****
ME BEFORE YOU, abridged:
JOJO MOYES (screenwriter) and THEA SHARROCK (director): Okay, we need to check off as many points as we can on our checklist of "Romance Tropes That Make People Cry." Here we go...
LOUISA: Hello. I am the protagonist of this movie. I am so quirky and adorable you can't help but fall in love with me! I have zero ambitions in life. This will allow me to grow as a character.
WILL: I'm a huge jerk and this will allow me to grow as a character.
JOJO MOYES and THEA SHARROCK: Cool. Check off "obvious character arcs." Now to shove in a forced meeting.
LOUISA: Despite having zero (emphasis on zero) experience in caring for quadriplegics, I've been hired as Will's caretaker!**
WILL: And I hate her!
JOJO MOYES/THEA SHARROCK: "Belligerent sexual tension" is a go.
WILL: After spending a few months with you, Louisa, I've decided that I don't find you overwhelmingly annoying anymore.
LOUISA: Great. And now I'm kind of falling in love with you. Except I have a boyfriend. A really crappy one. He doesn't really care about me or my interests, but for some reason I've stayed with him for seven years.
JOJO MOYES/THEA SHARROCK: "Bad boyfriend to emphasize amazing qualities of main male hero" check!
PATRICK (Louisa's boyfriend): Hey, Louisa, I am uncomfortable with your relationship with Will, so we're breaking up. Although my motivations for breaking up with you could have been understandable, I've just been such a jerk the entire movie that nobody's sad to see me go.
LOUISA: (to Will) Sweet. Now we can hook up.
WILL: (after a few scenes of cutesy romance with Louisa) Actually, we can't be a thing. Even though you've showed me life could be really awesome, I've decided to go through with assisted suicide because life in a wheelchair is just not worth it. (He dies)
LOUISA: This is really sad. But my relationship with Will really changed me as a person, so that's good, I guess.
JOJO MOYES/THEA SHARROCK: Sweet! We checked off the big one: "Death of one half of the romantic pair to ensure a tearjerker."
THE END
(**-Yes, I know there's an explanation given as to why they hired Louisa despite her lack of experience. It does not make this detail any less stupid.)
Oh, boy. I don't really know how to describe how I felt about Me Before You. The above snarky summary was meant to highlight the issues I had with it. And even though I had quite a few issues with the movie, it's not a poorly made movie. I loved the cast; it's the primary reason I was so keen on checking this movie out in the first place. It never gets melodramatic or cheesy. But overall, the movie's plot is contrived. It is so desperate to be a tearjerker that, instead of dropping or changing certain plot points and characters, it just recycles cliches from other romance movies to guarantee a weeping audience. Although the subject of quadriplegia is certainly new and different, the characters and storyline that are built upon this subject are old. We have the cutesy main character and her kooky family. We have the stoic love interest who will warm up to her. We have the stoic love interest's rich family, who is prim and proper and have next to no personality. We have an ending in which one of the main characters dies because how else are you going to get people to cry?
Me Before You is not a dreadful movie. I didn't want to set the DVD on fire when the movie was over. It didn't feel like a waste of two hours. However, the movie could have been so much more interesting if it hadn't played straight with so many romantic movie cliches. That said, Me Before You is a decent, if not wholly original, movie for a girls' night in.
