50/50 | Review
A comedy about cancer sounds off and shouldn’t work. A life-threatening disease such as cancer is a very touchy topic that shouldn’t be joked about, but ’50/50′ succeeds in doing just that. Director Jonathan Levine (‘The Wackness’) provides a wonderful film that offers a realistic take on cancer and manages to balance powerful emotion with humor.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Adam Learner, a 27-year-old radio broadcast journalist. Adam exercises, doesn’t smoke or drink, and doesn’t know how to drive (He claims it’s unsafe is the fifth leading cause of death). Yet when he starts experiencing back pain, Adam discovers he has a rare form of cancer in his spine that has a 50% survival rate.
Adam doesn’t deal with cancer alone, however. His best friend and co-worker, Kyle (Seth Rogen), stays by his side. Kyle tries his best to keep Adam’s mind off of the seriousness that is cancer by hooking him up with girls and finding the humor in his situation . Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard, from ‘The Help‘) tries to help as his girlfriend, but her less-than-committed relationship with Adam before his cancer diagnosis stirs up more trouble between the two later on. His annoyingly protective and worrisome mother (Anjelica Huston) wants to smother him, but Adam doesn’t allow her to. And there is a new and inexperienced psychologist, Katherine (Anna Kendrick, from ‘Up in the Air’), who tries to help Adam deal with his problem.
While undergoing chemo-therapy, Adam befriends two other elderly chemo patients, Alan (Philip Baker Hall) and Mitch (Matt Frewer). These two (pot smoking) old men, especially Alan, provide even more laughter when Rogen isn’t isn’t in the scenes to do so. Having such a sense of humor in two terminally-ill men provides ’50/50′ with more heart. The two of them simply hanging out with Adam on a daily basis demonstrates the film’s theme of enjoying life to the fullest.
The film’s screenplay is written by Will Reiser and based on his own personal experiences with cancer and real-life friendship with Rogen. ’50/50′ benefits from Reiser’s autobiographical input, as well as from the chemistry between Joseph Gordan-Levitt and Seth Rogen. It’s probably easy for Rogen to basically play himself in the film, but that shouldn’t undermine his performance. It’s amazing how well Rogen is able to give off genuinely funny moments while dealing with such an extreme topic. The most important performance, though, is given by Levitt, who seems like he can do no wrong. Levitt is strong in every film he’s been in, from a romantic-dramedy like ‘(500) Days of Summer’ to a badass action flick like ‘Inception‘.
Adam as a character requires Levitt to express a wide range of emotion. Anger, depression, and confusion are the gist of it. There is a great scene in the film’s third act when Adam has a nervous breakdown. It’s a depressingly breath-taking scene. Levitt’s pitch-perfect performance combined with Adam’s deadly predicament adds up to a great film experience.
It’s such a shame for anyone to have to go through cancer, and especially at such a young age. ’50/50′ could have easily been a failure by being too sappy or preachy, but is instead genuinely moving and emotional. The hospital sequence in the film’s third act will make anyone at least teary-eyed, and that’s a guarantee. The film uses lots of foul-language and humor, yet it’s feel-good humor. There is not one noticeable problem with ’50/50′. The film moves at a consistently brisk pace, while remarkably shifting from a funny moment to a serious moment seamlessly.
