The COARD: Me Before You

As always, we are not going to spoil this movie for you right away. We will discuss the acting, overall story, music, and anything else we can think of before we move onto the best part of this review, which unfortunately for you spoiler wimps, will reside in the spoiler section. This movie has a heavy topic which cannot be removed from the review. So try to enjoy the next 50 words or so that are spoiler free. 

Roy: Well uh. Emotions were there the whole time. Also! My throat really started hurting at one point. You know. And Fashion. And. Well. It was like a really weird and kind Game of Thrones episode.

Cody: Yep. Good. Better at some points. There were things. Stuff. Ya know. Feels were had. So on. Yep.

Roy: *Roy impatiently taps his foot while glancing at his watch and wonders if enough time has passed where they can have a good discussion about this intersting film. He supposes not and that he will be forced to actually say something about this movie that won't ruin it for our dozens of faithful readers....*

If you're not immediately enchanted by her, then you have no soul

Ok. Well. There was a lot to like about this movie actually. And I am going to start with the music. The film makers really understood the mood they were trying to strike with particular scenes and found the perfect songs to pair said scenes with. Every time a song began to play I found myself feeling the desired emotion the movie makers wanted me to feel. So bravo people. Good work there. The performances from every actor in this movie were great. Literally. Every person who wandered on the screen made me believe they were in fact these characters they were portraying. But the person who left everyone in her brightly colored dust was Emilia Clarke. Good lord this woman is a fine actress. I have seen here in only three things. This, Game of Thrones, and Terminator Genisys. Stop Laughing. It wasn't that bad. And she was a bright spot in that movie. I have been fully invested in all of her characters. She is as genuine as she is refreshing. And as Lou Clark she was adorable. There is no other word. I took my wife to this movie and three minutes in she looks at me and says, "She is so cute."

Behold, the eyes of a madman

Cody: Nothing makes me more proud than seeing my long tutelage of Roy in the area of movie scores finally paying dividends. "but Cody, I was paying attention to movie scores before you were in preschool," Roy is likely to say. Blasphemy. Of course you noticed them, but it was I that showed you time and time again the impact a score can have on a film. Bravo, indeed. Emilia, Emilia, Emilia. What a wondrous surprise. As you somewhat alluded to, she has a limited IMDb resume. This is her fourth feature length film credit at age 29. Let's hope that number doubles in the next decade. She was stupendous. If you watch Game of Thrones, you know Emilia as the iron willed Queen and Mother of Dragons who demands respect from all she meets. The bubbly and heart-warming Lou Clark is on the entire opposite end of the spectrum, and I bought into this character every moment of the movie. We just talked about how Jennifer Lawrence always plays Jennifer Lawrence in her movies (which is fine by the way, because everybody likes J-Law being J-Law). Emilia Clarke has character range. I don't know enough to say if she is a true method actor (see: Lewis, Daniel Day) (seriously though, take four minutes to read that page. Dude is insane.), but she certainly became her character. Lou Clark was adorable. How often do you smile at a movie? Laugh, sure, but what about irresistibly smiling at a character? Lou Clark made me smile with ease, and because of that, she made the movie.

Roy: Does everyone know that I taught Cody everything he knows about everything? Because I did. He might claim to have had some knowledge about things before me, and that might even be true. But I am stating an unequivocal fact that Cody owes me thanks for everything he knows. And because I've officially posted it on all of the internets, it is now complete fact.............  Anyway. Not to beat a dead horse after gushing over The Nice Guys but Me Before You also nailed the chemistry factor. The actors played well off of one another. I believed these two people had fallen in love. Sam Claflin displayed a slow warming to Lou perfectly. A man who has to play a quadriplegic would run into a few challenges on set, namely not being able to use body language. So much of how we communicate to one another is done non-verbally, and Claflin did not have that luxury. He told a story with only his face and his words and should be applauded. He could not have done a better job.

Cody: I...I can't. I'm not going to dignify that with a response (everyone please note that I am being the bigger man here. Did you note it? Good. Taking the high road is pointless without credit). I did think that Claflin did a stand up job *cue rim shot* in his role, but I'll forget it in comparison to Clarke's show stealing performance. So should you see this movie? If you want a charming and simple story, you're golden. If you want that simple story to make you weep, you're better off with the recent The Fault in Our Stars. If you want a realistic plot, you may want to look any of 1,000 different places. Charming, simple, just enough emotion, and characters played superbly, but not realistic enough to completely suck me in. Writing vs Acting. Writing kept the movie from reaching its ceiling, but acting made it watchable nonetheless.

Enough. We can no longer go on politely speaking about this movie in hushed tones and writing drivel; yes, drivel about what was good without talking about the entire point of this movie. So if you do not want to know what really happened in this film. Go away.... But you know, please come back for all of our other cool stuff! 

Roy: I really think the best way to bring us all up to speed is to just explain the story in it's most basic form. Extremely handsome, rich, charming, and athletic man tragically becomes a quadriplegic. He decides to end his life through an assisted suicide firm in Sweden. Mom brings in adorable girl to care for him hoping it would change his mind. He falls in love with adorable girl. Decides to die anyway. The end. Are we all on the same page? Excellent. Cody, I'm going to disagree with you here. I thought the writing was really good. But I can't pretend I'm not biased. You give me a story about Brits and I'm sold. I enjoyed this movie the whole time I was watching it. I enjoyed watching Lou slowly work her way into Will's life and help him to see the value in it. I thought the story was all the stronger by the fact that he still wanted out of that life. It made a better story. Would we have smiled if he decided to live with Lou forever? Of course we would have. But his explanation on the beach when he told her that he was still going to end his life really got me thinking. And as a man I felt it was easy to empathize with him.

Cody: Well the story was charming, and I gave it credit as such. It was the overall writing that was lacking. I'm differentiating between the love story and the path to get there, I suppose. Really though, it all came down to one sequence of events for me to be all, "meh." Will and Lou have their lovely wedding date experience, but Will gets diagnosed with pneumonia right after that. Lou rushes to the hospital to be at his side, and you can tell they are truly in love. The feels are being had left and right at this point. You're up, then you're down, and you're feeling the whole time. Suddenly Will is okay. Wait, not only is he okay, he has been medically cleared to go on an impromptu extravagant and romantic vacation! What? Why? Lou, you love him. He loves you. Why do you need to go to what appears to be a tropical island for both of you to confirm this? And look. I get it. This is a movie. It never claimed to be real life, but it had something real going at that point. After the montage of exciting vacation events, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was suddenly watching a British Fifty Shades of Grey. Naive girl and naive girl. Handsome rich brooding guy and handsome rich brooding guy. Sadist and quadriplegic (okay, those might be a bit different). It was all forced and unnecessary. We had our love story; it didn't require lavishness. Once I was momentarily snapped from the spell of Clarke and Caflin, there wasn't enough time to bring me back in. The "magical moment trip" is one movie trope I could really do without.

Roy: You seriously did not think that I was just going to let you get away with publicly admitting that you not only watched Fifty Shades of Grey, but you thought it was one of the best films of 2015. Don't bother going back through your paragraph to find the evidence. It's there. Trust me. But you're right. When I found out that he was magically cleared to go on this vacation I had a moment where I thought, "Wait... what?" But that odd addition aside it still had great moments. And I get why they did it. I think they needed to show us his resolve. If after this magnificent time with Lou, and admitting to how much he's in love with her, he still wants to die? He sold me on it. I cannot fault a man for not wanting to watch the woman he loves spoon feed him the rest of his life. Not to mention everything else involved in caring for a men who cannot feel anything from the shoulders down. As much as I cannot imagine making the same decision, I found myself not being able to blame him for it either.

Cody: I'm not going to apologize for having perfect movie comparisons and generally knowing more about movies than you. I can see it really upset you that I nailed that reference, but I'm not sorry. You should have gotten there first. Speaking of getting there first, poor Neville Longbottom. He went and got hot, and he still is being put in the most unfortunate situations. Dumped after 7 years for a guy who can't use his limbs, that can't feel good. Whether or not the movie was trying to make a point about assisted suicide (it unabashedly was), I felt his decision wasn't all that important. Sure, it was sad to see the final scene with him, but that wasn't the takeaway I had from this movie. For the first time ever, I unequivocally nailed my haiku. Going with the lyrics from Spirits by The Strumbellas as my title was a fantastic choice. I knew the movie was going to contain quality of life tones, I just didn't realize it would be Lou who learned how to live, while Will stayed pat on his stance on life. Good twist, Me Before You. Life is out there people, go live it!

Roy: I'm glad you brought that up.  One of the things that was interesting about this movie was the fact that there was no bad guy. In most romances there is at least one jerk lurking around the corner waiting to pounce on the innocent beauty. But that wasn't the case with this film. I honestly felt bad for every person in this movie. Neville Longbottom wasn't a bad guy. Sure he was a little self absorbed, but part of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of our sweet Lou. She dated this guy for seven years and was content to swim along in his wake, just happy that they were together. It's not his fault that she began spending all of her time with a man who was easily ten times his better despite not being able to move his limbs. It was just one of those situations where there was nothing he could do. And this isn't the only situation like this. It was easy to feel like Will's best friend and ex-girlfriend were terrible people for marrying each other after the accident. However, it was made very clear that Will pushed both of them away. It only makes sense that those two would cling to one another in a time of loss and crisis. I don't think they were the bad guys. I think the only bad guys in this movie are spinal cord injuries.

Cody: ..and motorcyclists. It's not enough that they constantly endanger themselves, now they've ruined poor Will's life. Selfish wankers. I agree though, everyone was likable enough. In that sense, the movie did a good job of making things seem real. The best friend and ex-girlfriend was a bit much. It might be the proud Anglophile in me or maybe it's the fact that I've been cultivating my cinematic expertise so fervently recently, but I wanted this to be more than the typical American young adult romance film. Great acting, likable characters, charming story, forgettable film. There's your eight word tagline, America! And by America, I of course mean the tens of people reading right now...but still!

Roy: I have to agree with you yet again. If I want to watch a Nicholas Sparks novel turned into a movie I can close my eyes and throw a stick and hit one. I wanted Me Before You to not fall into that same category. A feat that was proved impossible to me by the fact that almost every person in the world I spoke to about this movie had the same response, "Oh! Is that the new Nicholas Sparks?!" ....... I weep for our society.

Cody: I won't stand for it any longer! I vow that our next movie, nay, film will be an entirely original work of art!