Me Before You - B-

Quick Hit: A love story that is unique and different, but not all together sold throughout.

I will thoroughly admit that I have at times wondered about Emilia Clark’s acting as the Mother of Dragons. But, the problem is, Daenerys finds herself in some rather awkward (read – naked) situations quite often, and sometimes that’s hard to project on screen. So it was with great anticipation that I plugged in Me Before You, also featuring Sam Claflin (Finnick to my Hunger Games folks out there), because I wanted to see how she acted outside of what will probably be her most famous role.

And really, I wasn’t disappointed overall.

Me Before You is a rather different love story, because it encompasses a lot of political angst when it comes to things like assisted suicide. It follows Lou Clark (Clark) as she is hired after a series of odd jobs to be a companion to a wealthy paralyzed man named Will Traynor (Sam Claflin). The part of the film that seems the most forced is the parts before the couple meets. I didn’t really like Lou’s introduction at all, and the side stories that involve her family and money were boring and unnecessary. The part that really takes off is when the couple actually starts interacting.

Will is reacting to his new condition of life in a classic manner, often times wanting nothing to do but sit in his room and stare out the window. Or listen to screaming metal music. Clark simply tries to brighten everyone’s day, and is positively sick with positivity. It’s that initial clash that starts making the movie interesting, because you can see the ying and the yang. As the couple (as the eventually become) begin to find out more about each other, you can see how much their interests overlap. I also think it’s great that there is never any doubt that Lou loves Will. In a movie where money is so prevalent (the couple nearly flies off to Paris in an instant), it’s nice to see that for Lou the money wasn’t the object.

Eventually, the movie gets around to the fact that Will wants to kill himself. Spoiler alert – Lou doesn’t want him to. I think it’s here that Emilia Clark does some of her best acting (outside of the scene on the beach, where Claflin absolutely outstages her). We are allowed to play across her emotions and her thoughts. It’s actually disappointing when the film takes a predictable turn towards the end.

I know the ending is supposed to be happy and all, but I think it defeated the point of having Lou be, well, Lou. Aw, dang it. Spoiler alert!
 
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So Will kills himself in Sweden. No surprise there for me, but what was surprising was that the movie just decided that she was going to take the money and run. I didn’t like that. There is no reason for Lou’s character to truly want to take that money – it’s blood money from her dead boyfriend. Ugh, character motivations aside, I wish more movies paid attention to this.

I’m going to give Me Before You a “C+”.
 
For more on this film, check out IMDB.