50/50 is a film about cancer, but it's also a film that brings out many of its actors career-best performances alongside the gracefully handled subject matter..
Whenever anyone talks about upcoming comedy 50/50, its main premise, that of a mid-20s man who finds out he has potentially terminal cancer, rears its ugly head and threatens to eclipse the many conventional draws for, not only Apatow-style comedy fans but
watchers of light-hearted dramas that find a way of dealing with more weighty subject matter. Movie of the week this isn’t, but neither is it the good-time cinema experience that films like Knocked Up and The 40-year-old Virgin were.
An excellent Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam; a slightly uptight city worker who finds out on a routine visit to the doctors that he has a rare form of spinal cancer. His doctor, using limited bedside manner and adding to Adam’s sense of disbelieving detachment, tells him he has a 50/50 chance of survival, giving the film its title and setting the tone for the rest of the movie. The film isn’t just a poignant portrayal of what one must go through after diagnosis and during treatment, but also the frequently bizarre and hilarious reactions from the friends and family of the afflicted.
And that honesty about the experience comes from the true story of writer Will Reiser, who was given the same odds and helped through the experience by none other than Seth Rogen, who co-stars here in much the same role as he must have adopted in real life. In many ways, Rogen is the wild card here, bringing in the mass audience like no other comedy performer of the moment, but also introducing a very distinctive brand of humour that could easily have seemed out of place alongside the more serious subject matter. He’s also playing second fiddle to Gordon-Levitt, something he hasn’t had to do for a good long while.
But, even though the film’s star carries the film on his shoulders admirably, Rogen deserves credit for slotting into the narrative as well as he does. Confirming suspicions that his real-life persona might not be so different from the stoner buffoon he plays on screen, Rogen plays best friend Kyle with the same shtick as always, but takes it to a level of emotional authenticity and genuine human reaction. The actor has tried his hand at slightly more dramatic roles over the years, but 50/50 could hold his perfect combination of hilarious tomfoolery, bromance and heavy drama, and he plays each thread with a dignity and grace he's struggled to show before.
Less successful is Anna Kendrick as Adam’s novice therapist, who brings to the role the same innocent charm we know her for but fails to be anything to the film but the token love interest. A common criticism of this new style of comedy has been their attitude towards female characters, and the general throwaway nature of mothers, sisters and girlfriends simply there to serve the male character’s narrative arc. Katherine (Kendrick) and quickly ousted girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) have the same problem, and their stories are always kept (maybe rightly?) subordinate to Adam and Kyle’s plotlines.
But one female character who does shine through is Adam’s mother, with Anjelica Huston playing both the overprotective mother and pushed-aside carer with the same pain and underlying panic in every scene. We’re encouraged to see her actions through Adam’s eyes, and so don’t realise her place as the film’s emotional core until he finally accepts her help himself. This comes quite late in the game, but her subsequent scenes bring forth the movie’s most emotional moments and Gordon-Levitt’s strongest performance. It’s a role that may be forgotten in light of the other more commercial performers, but the film would have lost something had Diane not been around.
Films about cancer don’t often take place in a world we can readily recognise, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made a career out of being the everyman, and the film makes sure he reacts in the same way as members of the audience can themselves imagine. When Adam first discovers his condition, he Googles it, and, bald from suffering through chemo, he’s convinced by his friend to use his predicament to pick up women. Owing mostly to the writer’s own experience, the jokes are never tasteless, even when they are made at Adam’s expense. Gordon-Levitt is miraculous in the role, and is largely responsible for it’s success not only as a cancer film, but as a laugh-out-loud comedy.
(This review is a repost of an earlier article)
watchers of light-hearted dramas that find a way of dealing with more weighty subject matter. Movie of the week this isn’t, but neither is it the good-time cinema experience that films like Knocked Up and The 40-year-old Virgin were.
An excellent Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam; a slightly uptight city worker who finds out on a routine visit to the doctors that he has a rare form of spinal cancer. His doctor, using limited bedside manner and adding to Adam’s sense of disbelieving detachment, tells him he has a 50/50 chance of survival, giving the film its title and setting the tone for the rest of the movie. The film isn’t just a poignant portrayal of what one must go through after diagnosis and during treatment, but also the frequently bizarre and hilarious reactions from the friends and family of the afflicted.
And that honesty about the experience comes from the true story of writer Will Reiser, who was given the same odds and helped through the experience by none other than Seth Rogen, who co-stars here in much the same role as he must have adopted in real life. In many ways, Rogen is the wild card here, bringing in the mass audience like no other comedy performer of the moment, but also introducing a very distinctive brand of humour that could easily have seemed out of place alongside the more serious subject matter. He’s also playing second fiddle to Gordon-Levitt, something he hasn’t had to do for a good long while.
But, even though the film’s star carries the film on his shoulders admirably, Rogen deserves credit for slotting into the narrative as well as he does. Confirming suspicions that his real-life persona might not be so different from the stoner buffoon he plays on screen, Rogen plays best friend Kyle with the same shtick as always, but takes it to a level of emotional authenticity and genuine human reaction. The actor has tried his hand at slightly more dramatic roles over the years, but 50/50 could hold his perfect combination of hilarious tomfoolery, bromance and heavy drama, and he plays each thread with a dignity and grace he's struggled to show before.
Less successful is Anna Kendrick as Adam’s novice therapist, who brings to the role the same innocent charm we know her for but fails to be anything to the film but the token love interest. A common criticism of this new style of comedy has been their attitude towards female characters, and the general throwaway nature of mothers, sisters and girlfriends simply there to serve the male character’s narrative arc. Katherine (Kendrick) and quickly ousted girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) have the same problem, and their stories are always kept (maybe rightly?) subordinate to Adam and Kyle’s plotlines.
But one female character who does shine through is Adam’s mother, with Anjelica Huston playing both the overprotective mother and pushed-aside carer with the same pain and underlying panic in every scene. We’re encouraged to see her actions through Adam’s eyes, and so don’t realise her place as the film’s emotional core until he finally accepts her help himself. This comes quite late in the game, but her subsequent scenes bring forth the movie’s most emotional moments and Gordon-Levitt’s strongest performance. It’s a role that may be forgotten in light of the other more commercial performers, but the film would have lost something had Diane not been around.
Films about cancer don’t often take place in a world we can readily recognise, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made a career out of being the everyman, and the film makes sure he reacts in the same way as members of the audience can themselves imagine. When Adam first discovers his condition, he Googles it, and, bald from suffering through chemo, he’s convinced by his friend to use his predicament to pick up women. Owing mostly to the writer’s own experience, the jokes are never tasteless, even when they are made at Adam’s expense. Gordon-Levitt is miraculous in the role, and is largely responsible for it’s success not only as a cancer film, but as a laugh-out-loud comedy.
(This review is a repost of an earlier article)
