Me Before You *** (2016, Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin, Janet McTeer, Charles Dance) – Movie Review

The likeability factor is high in this appealing, old-fashioned rom-com weepie, with attractive performances. Emilia Clarke charms as Louisa, or just little Lou, a young English woman desperate for work, who ends up looking after and falling in love with a suicidally depressed, quadriplegic accident victim, Will (Sam Claflin).

Of course it helps that he’s not some old git, but a very handsome, very rich bloke only a few years older than her. He owns the castle opposite his stately home! Other than the National Trust, who actually owns a castle?

JoJo Moyes writes the screenplay from her own bestseller, so she keeps it faithful to please her five million reader fans. Moyes’s attempt to make the thing realistic includes scenes of Will’s life in hospitals and wheelchairs. Plus a debate on the merits or otherwise of euthanasia. But it’s all pretend realism. It’s real life but not as we know it, like it’s all unfolding on another planet. Maybe planet Hollywood. It’s all played blatantly for laughs or tears, and generally speaking, it gets them.

Clarke’s performance starts shakily, like she seems to be in a TV sitcom, not helped by director Thea Sharrock’s sitcom-style handling, the over-lit lighting, the over-scored music, the over-staged moments, all over-egging the pudding. Clarke’s Louisa is supposed to be naive, unambitious and klutzy. This gives Clarke a lot of problems, which she tries to solve by over-acting and mugging. But, half an hour or so in, the character settles down, and so does Clarke, as a serious side – both caring and romantic – sets in, and the film takes off accordingly.

Louisa is supposed to be dumb and clever at the same time, a clashingly contradictory mix that hardly produces a convincing, certainly not ‘real’ character. She seems to know everything and nothing at the same time. Nevertheless, Moyes makes you go with the flow, battering you over the head (and heart) into submission, and, I guess, probably tears. There are shades of Bridget Jones here, both in the Brit romcom things, and in the main character (Louisa = Bridget) but the weepie part of the movie depends more on Love Story as its antecedent.

There are a couple of standout star support performances by Janet McTeer, Charles Dance. They are kind of wasted, especially dance, since they don’t really have enough to do. But, boy do they add some needed acting clout and authority to the film. They make it seem ‘real’ when they’re on screen, acting like they believe every darned word of it.

And Brendan Coyle does a grand little job as Louisa’s dad, making a silk purse out of, well not much. Matthew Lewis, on the other hand, is all untruthful sitcom as Louisa’s boyfriend Patrick. It may (just possibly) be amusing but it needed a firmer take. And ditto with Samantha Spiro as Louisa’s mum, making a sow’s ear out of it.

I need hardly tell you that this is a girls’ night out movie, aimed relentlessly (and successfully) at women the same age (mid-20s) as the heroine. They could cheerfully, or tearfully, take their mums along, but probably not their boyfriends, at least if they want them to stay their boyfriends.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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