Me Before You · reception & legacy
2016 · Thea Sharrock
How Me Before You has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A big commercial hit in 2016 — a modest-budget weepie that grossed over $200 million — but it arrived under a cloud of protest from disability rights activists, and that controversy, more than the mixed reviews, is what has stuck to it ever since.
What's debated
The perennial fight: is it a lush, ugly-cry romance or a film whose handling of disability and assisted dying is fundamentally objectionable — a debate that flared with #MeBeforeEuthanasia protests at its premiere and still splits comment sections.
Its footprint
It lives on as a canonical 'bring tissues' date movie of the 2010s, with the bumblebee tights and Emilia Clarke's hyper-expressive eyebrows becoming their own running joke among fans.
Where it stands
Filed in cinephile memory next to The Fault in Our Stars as a defining 2010s tearjerker — widely watched, rarely defended as great, endlessly rewatched anyway.