The Funnier Side of Cancer

Motherf---er.

Cancer – it’s som’in’, isn’t it: It’s confronting, and life-altering, and just so...unfair. It also can be kinda funny, from the looks of 50/50, the new dramedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Up in the Air Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick.

Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) directs from a script by Will Reiser, who’s real-life friends with Rogen (who co-produced with his Superbad mate Evan Goldberg) and who based the story on his own experience as a young man battling the disease with a little help from his oh-so-funny friends.

The result is a movie that’s really quite good and touching (ergo my opening remark), one that doesn’t turn into a pity party for Adam (a beyond-nuanced Gordon-Levitt, who’s so evolving as a leading man), the patient at the forefront of the story, or in too many Rogen-esque shenanigans.

There’s no bull in this one, just honesty, y’ know.

The journey Adam goes on is just fraught with reality: the way the twentysomething finds out he has a terrible-sounding form of spinal cancer (from a doctor with the worst bedside manner ever); the way he breaks the news to his closest friend, Kyle (Rogen); Kyle’s I’m-scared-s---less-for-you-but-Imma-gon’-deflect-it-with-humor reaction; the way Adam reluctantly and finally tells his worrywart smother or a mother (Angelica Huston) he’s sick...all real.

50/50 – the movie’s title refers to Adam’s chances – takes us through it all, but it doesn’t wallow in any one step of the process for too long, which works.

We know chemo’s going to take it out of the guy, but we don’t need to see him get sick for 20 minutes.

We know his artist girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) is no good for him, so her hilariously unceremonious exit doesn’t become a trilogy of terror that goes on and on and on.

And we know that Katherine, the just-getting-her-experience young doctor on her way to being a doctor played by Kendrick with such bumbling intelligence is exactly the kind of support, if not girl, Adam needs in his life (not just because of the cancer).

Everything, all of these events, happen pretty organically, and they develop naturally.

There’s nothing didactic about it – it’s all part of the story, and Adam handles it as any real person would: with quiet anger, humor, longing, fear, rage, resolution, defiance...you name it.

Obviously, since Reiser lived to write 50/50, you know Adam ends up being A-OK and able to get on with his life. The beauty of the movie is that cancer quietly gives him a reason open his eyes to his life in a way he hadn’t before, to better understand those around him.

Yeah, yeah – it’s always that way, but there’s something about seeing it captured so well on screen. When stories are told so triumphantly, well...that inspires something in the audience, so go get inspired.

My Rating ****

Photo: Summit Entertainment.