Content material warning: This text discusses themes and material that some readers could discover triggering, together with physician-assisted suicide.
Within the midst of her tenure as Daenerys Targaryen on “Recreation of Thrones,” Emilia Clarke discovered the time to shoot a heartfelt, weepy romance film … and years later, it is discovering new life on Amazon Prime’s streaming service. So what is the film?
Launched in 2016, “Me Earlier than You” — primarily based on the best-selling novel of the identical title by Jojo Moyes, which got here out 4 years prior — tells the story of Louisa “Lou” Clark (Clarke), a bubbly however unmotivated younger lady who finally ends up working as an in-home carer for Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), who led a particularly lively life as a banker and athlete earlier than moving into a bike accident. Will deeply struggles together with his new life as a tetraplegic (that means that he has a devastating spinal wire damage that impacts his capacity to maneuver his legs and arms) and, frankly, has a very tough perspective about how his complete world has modified, however Lou’s irrepressible spirit and daring nature unexpectedly charms him, serving to him reside life extra totally.
Sadly, earlier than Lou enters Will’s life, he makes the choice to finish his life at a clinic in Switzerland that allows physician-assisted suicide. As a lot as Lou tries to persuade Is not going to to pursue that path, he finally does. Lou spends the final moments of Will’s life by his facet, and after his demise, it is revealed that he left her a big sum of money to encourage her to reside her life to the fullest — one thing she reads in a letter Will left together with his final will and testomony whereas she sits in his very favourite café in Paris.Â
The film is a tearjerker, to make sure — however apparently, individuals on Amazon Prime are embracing it. So what did critics need to say about “Me Earlier than You” when it was first launched?
Critics — and the disabled neighborhood — really did not suppose a lot of Me Earlier than You
Earlier than addressing the vital response to “Me Earlier than You,” it is very vital to notice that the movie made waves within the disabled neighborhood — and not in a great way. Many incapacity advocates understandably felt as if the movie’s message is that life with a incapacity isn’t any life in any respect, which is definitely not true, and the Rotten Tomatoes vital consensus displays it, studying, “‘Me Earlier than You’ advantages from Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin’s alluring chemistry, though it is not sufficient to compensate for its clumsy remedy of a delicate topic.” With a mean score of 54%, which is formally “rotten,” what did particular person critics need to say on the matter?
Roxana Hadidi, writing for Punch Drunk Critics on the time, obtained proper to the center of the matter: “Stable performances do not steadiness out the problematic components of ‘Me Earlier than You,’ that are many.” Of their overview for Vox, Aja Romano expressed an identical sentiment, writing, “In different phrases, in the event you’ve ever needed your romance with a facet of incapacity and continual ache, ‘Me Earlier than You’ is ideal for you — so long as you do not really need a real looking depiction of any of these issues.” In the meantime, in New York Journal, David Edelstein was harsh about each the e-book and the movie, quipping, “Followers of the best-selling novel by Jojo Moyes shall be heartened to listen to that she wrote the screenplay, too, and that she has preserved all of the strains that — when learn aloud — will present a lot mirth at your subsequent feast.” Only for some steadiness, although, David Ehrlich at IndieWire fairly preferred it, saying “Me Earlier than You” is “such a splendidly uncynical film that it nearly does not matter that it’s not superb.”
What have Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin accomplished since Me Earlier than You?
The underside line is that, although “Me Earlier than You” was a significant vital misfire, each Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin went on to larger and higher initiatives. Clearly, Clarke continued taking part in Daenerys Targaryen on the HBO juggernaut “Recreation of Thrones” till the present got here to an finish in 2019, though that additionally stirred up loads of controversy (largely as a result of the ultimate episode was, uh, not superb). After her time as Daenerys, Clarke took on one other weepy love story — the 2019 movie “Final Christmas” with Henry Golding and Emma Thompson — lent her voice to the 2022 movie “The Wonderful Maurice,” and appeared in a romantic comedy with a sci-fi twist known as “The Pod Technology,” which launched in 2023. That very same 12 months, she formally joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as G’iah within the Disney+ authentic sequence “Secret Invasion.”
As for Claflin, he earned fame and approval for his function as Finnick Odair within the “Starvation Video games” movies earlier than “Me Earlier than You,” and after taking part in Will Traynor, he joined the forged of the Irish-set drama “Peaky Blinders.” You may as well catch Claflin within the 2020 Netflix authentic “Enola Holmes” — the place he performs Mycroft Holmes alongside Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill as Enola and Sherlock, respectively — and, most just lately, Claflin obtained rave opinions for his lead function because the troubled (and fictional) rock star Billy Dunne in “Daisy Jones & the Six.” If you happen to’re interested in “Me Earlier than You,” it is accessible to stream on Amazon Prime now.
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