When Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were on the talk show interview circuit to discuss 50/50, they tried very hard to sell people on the idea that this is a funny movie about cancer. Most people didn't buy it, because how could cancer ever be funny? But as someone with a dark and twisty sense of humor, I completely understood what they meant.
There are two ways to react to bad news: either you're a person who wants lots of tea, sympathy, and meaningful discussions about life whilst being surrounded by highly optimistic and spiritual people, or you're a person who wants friends who will initially sympathize and then get to work making all sorts of jokes about your situation and reduce it to a mockable event of negligible importance. That latter category is exactly what Will Reiser experienced when he was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties. With wisecracking buddy Seth Rogen by his side, he got through the ordeal. I heard him discussing in an interview how he watched movies about people with cancer and they were always extremely dark and depressing. This felt so different from his actual experience that it prompted his need to write the screenplay that became 50/50.
The movie is funny and sentimental without being maudlin, and with the deeply personal story behind its inception, it's little wonder that Will Reiser has already won some awards from critics for Best Original Screenplay. He fully deserves an Oscar nomination next year because he set out to make a movie about the funny side of cancer and he did so with tremendous results.This is thanks in large part to the phenomenal work of Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Adam, the one diagnosed with cancer, and Seth Rogen who plays his best friend Kyle.
Adam is a clean-living neat freak, so he is all the more stunned to find that he has cancer in spite of living a blameless life free of cigarettes, booze, and drugs. His artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) insists that she will stay by his side throughout the ordeal, but she quickly becomes a disappointment, insisting that she can't enter the hospital and wait with him while he gets chemo because she doesn't want to mix the positive and negative - "it's an energy thing" - and constantly forgets to pick him up after treatments. But Kyle is steadfastly by his side through all of this. Initially distraught upon hearing the news, Kyle quickly decides to look on the bright side of things. Upon learning that Adam has a 50/50 shot of survival, he breathes a sigh of relief and says, "If you were a casino game, you'd have the best odds!" He's so certain that Adam has nothing to worry about that he sets about taking full advantage of the situation. Armed with medical marijuana and using the cancer story to prey on sympathetic girls in bars, the duo try to make the best of an awful situation, choosing to laugh in the face of the very real danger that Adam is in.
To get an idea of how Adam is actually feeling during this process, we get to see several sessions with him and his therapist, Dr. McKay (Anna Kendrick at her nervous best). She is still a trainee psychologist and Adam is only her third patient. Kendrick does a great job playing a woman who is vastly unsure of what she's doing but also determined not to fail because her patients depend on her. Her exchanges with Adam are refreshingly honest, and while I don't think I would want a therapist like her if I had cancer, it certainly works in this movie. The supporting cast is rounded out with Angelica Huston, who does a brilliant job of playing Adam's worry-wart mother who pesters him with her solicitude but who is also his rock when the going gets rough.
This film isn't a barrel of laughs by any means. Try as he might, at some point Adam has to acknowledge the fact that he is in fact very sick, and the screenplay adeptly handles the transition as he goes from cracking jokes about cancer to expressing his agonizing frustration at the hand that he's been dealt. Gordon-Levitt is completely immersed in this character, and Rogen is wonderful at portraying Kyle's truly sincere attempts to cheer up his friend and make his life as normal as possible. There's also a great moment when Adam realizes that even though he is the one with cancer, he still has to care about how his mother is dealing with the fallout from his illness. Just because you're sick, you don't get a free pass to behave however you want. This is emphasized multiple times as Adam is forced to be the one comforting people who hear his news instead of the other way around.
50/50 is filled with unnerving laughs and is an intimate portrayal of one man's way of approaching his possible demise. It is poignant and heartfelt and it makes you grateful for the friends in your life who encourage you not to take everything so damn seriously.
There are two ways to react to bad news: either you're a person who wants lots of tea, sympathy, and meaningful discussions about life whilst being surrounded by highly optimistic and spiritual people, or you're a person who wants friends who will initially sympathize and then get to work making all sorts of jokes about your situation and reduce it to a mockable event of negligible importance. That latter category is exactly what Will Reiser experienced when he was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties. With wisecracking buddy Seth Rogen by his side, he got through the ordeal. I heard him discussing in an interview how he watched movies about people with cancer and they were always extremely dark and depressing. This felt so different from his actual experience that it prompted his need to write the screenplay that became 50/50.
The movie is funny and sentimental without being maudlin, and with the deeply personal story behind its inception, it's little wonder that Will Reiser has already won some awards from critics for Best Original Screenplay. He fully deserves an Oscar nomination next year because he set out to make a movie about the funny side of cancer and he did so with tremendous results.This is thanks in large part to the phenomenal work of Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Adam, the one diagnosed with cancer, and Seth Rogen who plays his best friend Kyle.
Adam is a clean-living neat freak, so he is all the more stunned to find that he has cancer in spite of living a blameless life free of cigarettes, booze, and drugs. His artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) insists that she will stay by his side throughout the ordeal, but she quickly becomes a disappointment, insisting that she can't enter the hospital and wait with him while he gets chemo because she doesn't want to mix the positive and negative - "it's an energy thing" - and constantly forgets to pick him up after treatments. But Kyle is steadfastly by his side through all of this. Initially distraught upon hearing the news, Kyle quickly decides to look on the bright side of things. Upon learning that Adam has a 50/50 shot of survival, he breathes a sigh of relief and says, "If you were a casino game, you'd have the best odds!" He's so certain that Adam has nothing to worry about that he sets about taking full advantage of the situation. Armed with medical marijuana and using the cancer story to prey on sympathetic girls in bars, the duo try to make the best of an awful situation, choosing to laugh in the face of the very real danger that Adam is in.
To get an idea of how Adam is actually feeling during this process, we get to see several sessions with him and his therapist, Dr. McKay (Anna Kendrick at her nervous best). She is still a trainee psychologist and Adam is only her third patient. Kendrick does a great job playing a woman who is vastly unsure of what she's doing but also determined not to fail because her patients depend on her. Her exchanges with Adam are refreshingly honest, and while I don't think I would want a therapist like her if I had cancer, it certainly works in this movie. The supporting cast is rounded out with Angelica Huston, who does a brilliant job of playing Adam's worry-wart mother who pesters him with her solicitude but who is also his rock when the going gets rough.
This film isn't a barrel of laughs by any means. Try as he might, at some point Adam has to acknowledge the fact that he is in fact very sick, and the screenplay adeptly handles the transition as he goes from cracking jokes about cancer to expressing his agonizing frustration at the hand that he's been dealt. Gordon-Levitt is completely immersed in this character, and Rogen is wonderful at portraying Kyle's truly sincere attempts to cheer up his friend and make his life as normal as possible. There's also a great moment when Adam realizes that even though he is the one with cancer, he still has to care about how his mother is dealing with the fallout from his illness. Just because you're sick, you don't get a free pass to behave however you want. This is emphasized multiple times as Adam is forced to be the one comforting people who hear his news instead of the other way around.
50/50 is filled with unnerving laughs and is an intimate portrayal of one man's way of approaching his possible demise. It is poignant and heartfelt and it makes you grateful for the friends in your life who encourage you not to take everything so damn seriously.
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