Content warning: This article discusses themes and subject matter that some readers may find triggering, including physician-assisted suicide.
In the midst of her tenure as Daenerys Targaryen on “Game of Thrones,” Emilia Clarke found the time to shoot a heartfelt, weepy romance movie … and years later, it’s finding new life on Amazon Prime’s streaming service. So what’s the movie?
Released in 2016, “Me Before You” — based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Jojo Moyes, which came out four years prior — tells the story of Louisa “Lou” Clark (Clarke), a bubbly but unmotivated young woman who ends up working as an in-home carer for Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), who led an extremely active life as a banker and athlete before getting into a motorcycle accident. Will deeply struggles with his new life as a tetraplegic (meaning that he has a devastating spinal cord injury that affects his ability to move his arms and legs) and, frankly, has a really rough attitude about how his whole world has changed, but Lou’s irrepressible spirit and bold nature unexpectedly charms him, helping him live life more fully.
Unfortunately, before Lou enters Will’s life, he makes the decision to end his life at a clinic in Switzerland that permits physician-assisted suicide. As much as Lou tries to convince Will not to pursue that path, he ultimately does. Lou spends the last moments of Will’s life by his side, and after his death, it’s revealed that he left her a large amount of money to encourage her to live her life to the fullest — something she reads in a letter Will left with his last will and testament while she sits in his very favorite café in Paris.
The movie is a tearjerker, to be sure — but apparently, people on Amazon Prime are embracing it. So what did critics have to say about “Me Before You” when it was first released?
Critics — and the disabled community — actually didn’t think much of Me Before You
Before addressing the critical response to “Me Before You,” it’s very important to note that the film made waves in the disabled community — and not in a good way. Many disability advocates understandably felt as if the film’s message is that life with a disability is no life at all, which is certainly not true, and the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus reflects it, reading, “‘Me Before You’ benefits from Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin’s alluring chemistry, although it isn’t enough to compensate for its clumsy treatment of a sensitive subject.” With an average rating of 54%, which is officially “rotten,” what did individual critics have to say on the matter?
Roxana Hadidi, writing for Punch Drunk Critics at the time, got right to the heart of the matter: “Solid performances don’t balance out the problematic parts of ‘Me Before You,’ which are many.” In their review for Vox, Aja Romano expressed a similar sentiment, writing, “In other words, if you’ve ever wanted your romance with a side of disability and chronic pain, ‘Me Before You’ is perfect for you — as long as you don’t actually want a realistic depiction of any of those things.” Meanwhile, in New York Magazine, David Edelstein was harsh about both the book and the film, quipping, “Fans of the best-selling novel by Jojo Moyes will be heartened to hear that she wrote the screenplay, too, and that she has preserved all the lines that — when read aloud — will provide much mirth at your next dinner party.” Just for some balance, though, David Ehrlich at IndieWire quite liked it, saying “Me Before You” is “such a wonderfully uncynical movie that it almost doesn’t matter that it isn’t very good.”
What have Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin done since Me Before You?
The bottom line is that, despite the fact that “Me Before You” was a major critical misfire, both Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin went on to bigger and better projects. Obviously, Clarke continued playing Daenerys Targaryen on the HBO juggernaut “Game of Thrones” until the show came to an end in 2019, although that also stirred up plenty of controversy (largely because the final episode was, uh, not very good). After her time as Daenerys, Clarke took on another weepy love story — the 2019 film “Last Christmas” with Henry Golding and Emma Thompson — lent her voice to the 2022 film “The Amazing Maurice,” and appeared in a romantic comedy with a sci-fi twist called “The Pod Generation,” which released in 2023. That same year, she officially joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as G’iah in the Disney+ original series “Secret Invasion.”
As for Claflin, he earned fame and acclaim for his role as Finnick Odair in the “Hunger Games” films before “Me Before You,” and after playing Will Traynor, he joined the cast of the Irish-set drama “Peaky Blinders.” You can also catch Claflin in the 2020 Netflix original “Enola Holmes” — where he plays Mycroft Holmes alongside Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill as Enola and Sherlock, respectively — and, most recently, Claflin received rave reviews for his lead role as the troubled (and fictional) rock star Billy Dunne in “Daisy Jones & the Six.” If you’re curious about “Me Before You,” it’s available to stream on Amazon Prime now.
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