Why wait for Saturday's paper when you can read my 3.5 star review right now of "50/50," the superb, funny cancer comedy (that's right) starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and the cute-as-a-button Anna Kendrick.
Check out the trailer as well, below the review.
In playing a 27-year-old man with cancer who has only a “50/50” shot at survival, Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivers the kind of performance that is so authentic and funny and touching — but in a non-flashy way — that it probably won’t be remembered when people are handing out acting awards for this year.
But that performance, and the movie “50/50,” will be remembered for a long time by anyone who has had cancer, or anyone who has loved someone who had cancer, which is far too many people. This is a special movie, fatalistic and yet crowd-pleasing, that succeeds because it respects its audience as much as the gravity of the situation.
People will recognize the feelings of randomness and helplessness that come with the disease. “50/50” is superb at showing the ripple effect of those feelings, spreading from the patient to the best buddy (Seth Rogen) who doesn’t know how to handle such drama, to the frustrated mother (Anjelica Huston) who can’t baby her son and make it all feel better.
The movie will resonate for those people who understand the human comedy of the whole thing, like the balance of fear with the cathartic humor that comes out of those emotions, or the way that we embrace those we love and push away silly things that used to seem so important.
Anyone who’s been there will recognize the way that Adam (Gordon-Levitt, so good in “Inception,” and even better in “500 Days of Summer”), an average fellow in Seattle, reacts with a sense of surprise that looks a lot like a guy who’s calm — but who is more likely numb.
The just-right humor of Will Reiser’s feature film script debut always leavens the heavier realities (the nausea of chemotherapy, but hey, medicinal marijuana!), but those realities are never cheapened. It’s fair to compare “50/50” to “Terms of Endearment” in its treatment of such subject matter.
We can’t help but feel the same way as Adam when his therapist (Anna Kendrick, the young spitfire from “Up in the Air”) enters, looking like a teenager.
“What are you, like Doogie Howser” Adam asks of her. “Who? Is that someone who works here?” replies the 24-year-old who’s working on her doctorate and uncomfortably trying to do the best she can to comfort a man her own age.
Their in-session moments are excellent, like her efforts to improve her so-called bedside manner that are both awkward and unpracticed. The chemistry between the talented duo of Kendrick and Gordon-Levitt is only bettered by the on-screen relationship between Rogen and Gordon-Levitt.
Rogen’s raunchy, over-the-top character — which he has played so many times that we now know is Rogen himself (think “Knocked Up”) — works perfectly here as the pal who isn’t going to mope around, but who rather employs his sick friend’s malady and baldness as a wing-man prop to pick up women.
A great scene involves the two men literally extinguishing the memory of Adam’s girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard of “The Help”) is symbolic in more ways than one: It’s a great kiss-off to the plastic woman who fell out of love with a sick man, and the act also says goodbye to the one part of “50/50” that felt both cliched and didn’t work.
Anyone who has in some way been touched by cancer is going to laugh and very likely shed a tear watching this smart, witty picture. But you don’t have to have that experience for “50/50” to make you care about what happens to Adam, and to others.
