50/50

50/50 (2011)
Grade: B
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Angelica Huston
PREMISE: A young man's orderly life starts falling apart when he's diagnosed with bone cancer.

RATED R for strong language (including graphic sexual references), some sexuality and brief nudity, crude humor, and intense emotional content

--Well, 50/50 took me by surprise. Of course I had seen the trailers, TV spots, and pictures (like the one along this margin to the right) of Joseph Gordon-Levitt shaving his head while Seth Rogen looks on, so I knew it was going to be about someone who contracts cancer. But what I didn’t expect was for the movie to be so overwhelmingly somber. Billed as a comedy-and featuring one of today’s most popular comedians in Rogen-it does have zinging dialogue, amusing sarcasm, jokes here and there, more than one engaging occurrence of dramatic irony, and a classically-comic ending, but it is not a comedy. Not what you and I think of as a comedy, anyway; I doubt anyone will watch 50/50 and walk away quoting the dialogue or itching to recommend it to a friend. But that’s not to say it isn’t well-made.

The credits boast that the film is “based on a true story” and I don’t doubt it. It’s based on many true stories; those of every person who has ever had cancer, whether they’ve lived or died. It’s the story of how their life irrevocably changes, how their body changes, how the treatment of those around them changes and how they wonder-even if their body complies-if they can possibly recover.
Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a 27-year-old writer for a radio station. He lives a happy, if very even-keeled, life. He’s the type who watches from the sidelines as his horn-dog buddy Kyle (Seth Rogen) goes out day after day to score with the ladies, and the type who still tries to bring real romance to his stale relationship with a self-centered yuppie (Bryce Dallas Howard). He’s spent weeks working on a broadcast piece about a volcano, determined to get it exactly right, and he keeps his clingy mother (Angelica Huston) at bay. But when that nagging pain in his lower back becomes too much, he goes to see a doctor, and the diagnosis is as bad as it could be. “The more syllables, the worse it is” an elderly chemo patient tells Adam, which is bad, since Adam can barely pronounce the extremely drawn-out name for the malignant tumor clinging to his spinal cord. The cancer, of course, has a 50 percent chance of taking his life.

Shocked by the diagnosis, he tries to keep his life from falling apart, but he’s far too standoffish to have his mother around if she’s going to fuss over him all the time, too patient to be sharp with his girlfriend as she begins treating him with a kind of sweet but increasingly-obvious neglect, and too kind to tell his doctoral-studies-student-psychiatrist (Anna Kendrick) that her bland, by-the-book methods do nothing to alleviate his stress or ease his mind. Soon, Adam is barely working, spending his days raising the raggedy dog (named Skeletor) his girlfriend bought him, trying to find the energy and desire to be a decent wingman for his friend, and, slowly, realizing that he is probably going to die.

Like I said, it’s a somber movie. There are laughs to be had-I laughed out loud numerous times, whether at jokes or situations or even the occasional visual gag-yet this movie is only a comedy in its first half-hour, and in its final five minutes. In between, it’s a disturbingly-intimate portrait of a person falling apart (mentally, emotionally, and physically) as the cancer within them grows stronger. I’m sure it will ring very real with anyone who’s had cancer or was close to someone who had/has it, what with the psychiatrist’s pathetic attempts to encourage him (“you’re angry; that’s a good sign”), the best friend’s would-be reassuring reaction to the news (“Really? 50/50? That’s great! I was thinkin’ it would be way worse! If you were a Vegas casino game, you’d be one of the easier ones!”), the way he can’t make himself truly hate his increasingly-distant girlfriend, and, most prominently, Adam’s growing exasperation/frustration/anger at his helplessness.

As the film’s heart, soul, and center, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is superb. As I mentioned, it is only too easy to relate to what Adam is experience and feeling, and that’s because the actor makes it so clear. A quiet but disquieted soul even before the diagnosis, he becomes a boiling pot of repressed rage and frustration at his circumstances; his façade begins to crack long before he goes nearly suicidal and has a hysterical breakdown late in the film. The actor, already a well-known face before he rose to A-list fame with 2010’s Inception, allows you to feel all the bitterness, fear, shame and sadness of his deteriorating body and pitiful life. Given that he’s in nearly every frame of 50/50, Gordon-Levitt is the main reason this film has the impact it does; his performance is 100 percent believable.

As the rude, crude, yet in his own way, supportive, best friend, Rogen gets to harken back to his pre-mainstream fame days in uber-R-rated films like The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. He provides almost all the most colorful lines (and, yes, the majority of the laughs), but he gets nowhere near stealing the show from Gordon-Levitt.

The film’s trio of key female characters is brought to life by three talented actresses, with Huston making a mother’s worry, pain, and stress palpable with her expressions alone, Howard bringing some actual humanity to an instant applicant for the All-Time Worst Movie Girlfriends list, and Kendrick making an endearing impression with her limited screen time, as the earnest but inexperienced shrink.

Appropriately suiting a movie like this, the soundtrack is soft and often mournful, the picture often on the darker, greyer side, and the scenes short, many of them meant to add up to something bigger than they mean on their own.

So, do I recommend it?
First off, the film is very crude, with constant profanity and many graphic sexual references/descriptions (not to mention a short but fairly-graphic sex scene), and, secondly, as I’ve been saying, it’s very, very sobering. Billed as a laugh-out-loud comedy, it’s going to be an unpleasant wake-up call for groups of friends seeking some lazy entertainment. Then again, like I said, many people in today’s world-where cancer runs rampant-can relate to the happenings onscreen, however negative they may be. Can you tell I’m torn? Ultimately, I’d say, unless you’re a serious movie buff, or a die-hard fan of Gordon-Levitt or Rogen, it’s nothing you have to see.

Bottom line (I promise):
I think I’ve said everything. You won’t laugh for 100 minutes, as you might expect from a comedy prominently featuring Seth Rogen. Dark and slow, as befitting this material, 50/50 is an effectively-made but gritty, real “comedy”.

50/50 (2011)
Directed by Jonathan Levine
Written by Will Reiser
Rated R for strong language (including graphic sexual references), some sexuality and nudity, drug use, and intense emotional content
Length: 100 minutes