'50/50' beats the odds against a comedy about cancer
The comically sobering "50/50" stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam Lerner, a 27-year-old Seattle public radio station producer whose spine has been attacked by an aggressive cancer and it just might kill him soon.
His devoted girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) drives him to and from the hospital, but refuses to step a foot inside a medical facility.
His devoted mother Diane (Anjelica Huston) <I>freeeeeeeeeaks</I> out and hops aboard the guilt bus for a long, long ride.
His devoted father Richard (Serge Houde), suffering from Alzheimer's disease, doesn't even recognize him.
Leave it to his devoted best buddy Kyle (Seth Rogen) to see the silver lining in the dark cancer cloud: they can use Adam's medical condition to snare babes at the bars!
It's about 90/10 that a comedy about cancer would ever work, but "50/50" beats those odds, and does it marvelously.
Directed with a deft, lyrical touch by Jonathan "The Wackness" Levine, "50/50" avoids the sentimental pap that seizes most cancer movies while still respecting the seriousness of the disease.
"50/50" was written by Will Reiser, a comedy writer working on "Da Ali G. Show" with Rogen when he learned he had cancer. The two often joked about what kind of movie they could make about Reiser's potentially fatal illness. Here it is.
The appeal of "50/50" goes beyond how cancer affects its victim. It's mostly about how the people around the afflicted all react to the cancer. That's the nub of the story, and that's why Rogen's gregarious, openly self-serving character, Kyle, is a splendid foil for Gordon-Levitt's intensely inward character Adam.
Another stock character gets tossed into the mix, and the moment we meet Adam's cute and perky psychological counselor Katherine (Anna Hendrick), savvy filmgoers can tell she's being groomed as potential romantic material for Adam.
Yet, Reiser generously fills Katherine with complexity and sweetness by making her a young doctoral candidate who lacks life experience and can only treat Adam's mental state with academic recitations that drive him nuts.
Kendrick lets us know early on that Katherine clearly realizes her shortcomings. That she (and her first cancer case, Adam) knows she's in over her psychological head becomes the character's most endearing quality.
Although based on Reiser's cancer battle, "50/50" is highly fictionalized. The real Adam and Kyle (Reiser and Rogen) didn't go slumming for women in bars using Adam's disease as babe bait. (See my interview with them in Dann in Reel Life.)
Neither did Reiser go through chemotherapy as Adam does in some of the movie's most dramatically involving scenes with Mitch (Matt Frewer) and Alan (Philip Baker Hall), two older cancer patients who take the PBS kid under their wings.
Huston makes her concerned mother a portrait of maternal obsession without dipping into caricature.
That leaves Howard with the toughest character to crack, a woman torn between her intellectual responsibility to stand by her man and her emotional desire to flee.
"50/50" comes dangerously close to looking like a made-for-TV disease-of-the-week movie. Reiser's insights on the characters and his natural ability to put a comic spin on their reactions puts "50/50" on a much higher plane.
Then there's the Rogen factor.
The slimmed-down actor projects the same chummy persona from movie to movie, no matter how ill-fitting it may be. ("The Green Hornet" as a stoner dude?)
Here, the irrepressible Rogen's bombastic self is just what "50/50" needs to give the drama some comic counterweight and allow us to walk in Adam's hospital slippers with a light step to balance out his much darker circumstances.
<b>“50/50”</b>
★ ★ ★
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Other: A Summit Entertainment release. Rated R for language, sexual content, and some drug use. 99 minutes