GREG (Thomas Mann) isn’t your conventional high-school jock. He’s Jewish, something of a dweeb, nerd, geek, with a mom who lets him run free and a wonderfully eccentric dad who’s in the film mainly because boys need dads and Jesse Andrews’ screenplay adapting his own novel needs light relief.

Greg’s good buddy is classmate Afro-American Earl (RJ Cyler) whose home may be geographically only a couple of blocks away from Greg’s but is socially rather more distant.

And in the same neighbourhood lives Rachel (Olivia Cooke) who’s been diagnosed with an incurable form of leukaemia.

Those three youngsters, played by actors whose names are not yet household but may in time become so, play out the film’s dramatic core. Their characters don’t fit neatly into archetypal school groupings. Greg and Earl’s pastime using a smartphone and a laptop to make short movies with titles parodying those of classic feature movies provides much of the story’s energy. Genuine cineastes will find this a rather delightful diversion from a plot that, although inevitably sombre as the title of director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s film has informed us even before we’ve bought the ticket, delivers warmth and sensitivity.

The shadow of leukaemia hangs constantly over the film but not so heavily as to depress it. The meat of the story turns out to be not Rachel’s death, which happens without elaboration, but Greg’s dealing with it in a coda that does the film honour. Testosterone plays no part in the film’s structure. The three youngsters have made a film for and about Rachel, her family and her life. It’s wise, loving but not soupy or sentimental.

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