Novelist Jojo Moyes’s 2012 romance Me Before You was the kind of read that required a box of tissues to get through. It sold millions of copies. That’s a lot of tears.
The inevitable movie adaptation has arrived, boasting up-and-comers Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones and Sam Claflin of the Hunger Games franchise in the lead roles. For all its star power, however, it lacks something crucial: the emotional punch of the book.
That’s funny, because the story is mostly unchanged. Clarke plays Lou, a 26-year-old with an eccentric sense of style who lives with her parents in small-town England. The family is just barely scraping by, so when Lou loses her job at a bakery, desperate circumstances dictate that she take a job as a caregiver to a quadriplegic man, even though she has zero experience.
Thirty-year-old Will Traynor (Claflin) comes from a posh family and used to lead a charmed life in London, with a great job and a gorgeous girlfriend. But since getting hit by a motorbike, he’s been paralyzed from the neck down. Two years since his accident, he’s still angry; in fact, he’s plotting his suicide.
Will has no incentive to do anything but push away his new caregiver, and he’s good at being mean. His stubbornness, however, is no match for Lou’s sunny disposition. Even though he’s a snob and she doesn’t know what pesto is, pretty soon the two are falling in love — despite the small matter of her ill-matched boyfriend. She makes it her secret mission to convince Will that life is worth living.