Movie review: 'Me Before You'

Not only does Time Robey find this movie slushy and manipulative, he deems the score an unholy nightmare

There's gentle manipulation, and then there's having your arms manacled to a freight train of weepy catharsis, which is roughly the experience awaiting viewers of Me Before You.

Tragedy strikes early and that's just when you get a look at Emilia Clarke's outfits. Clarke's Louisa is a goofy waitress, buried under mountains of clashing knitwear and granny frocks, who loses her job at a tea shop.

She becomes the paid companion to Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), a handsome ex-City-boy whose once-golden life has been blighted by quadriplegia.

You know every next scene in store for these two. He's bitter, aloof, and pondering suicide. She's a silly one. How she dresses! Will's mother (Janet McTeer) has hired Louisa to come to their whopping castle of a place, as the latest in a long line of sacrificial lambs, one of whom she hopes might coo and charm her son out of despair.

If you like, it's Fifty Shades of Grey, with the Red Room of Pain replaced by Claflin's sarcasm in a wheelchair. And no sex.

Before long, you realise who the real prisoner is. Clarke, bugging out with her deer-in-the-headlights face, and then going super-expressive when the love story kicks in, gives such a crackers performance that you may start to worry for Louisa's mental health.

Claflin has good moments. As in The Riot Club, he can do curdled charm. You just wish director Thea Sharrock weren't so determined to slush this up. Every song choice is an unholy nightmare, and the lavish set-dressing makes it a tragic disability romance with a gratuitous side order of property porn.

Rating: 2/5

- The Daily Telegraph, London