'You could be having sex with hookers whilst skydiving, and your last wish is to drive a car?'

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2011)

It was so right to make this a comedy. It would have worked just as well as a drama in the 'Philadelphia' tradition, but adding humour was a great decision, as it eases tension from a morbid subject. I felt good after seeing it and don't have a problem with recommending it, even during Christmas.
We first see Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) smiling while jogging cautiously. He stops at traffic lights even though there isn't a car in sight. We understand why: Adam is a hypochondriac. He doesn't drink or smoke, he recycles and he has cleaning-OCD. He couldn't be more health conscious.
Adam's beautiful girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) believes in positive energy and probably only stays with him because few others would tolerate her falseness. Adam has a best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogan). He's the loquacious type, whose defining trait is that he's addicted to sex, or at least the pursuit of sex. He's a younger and dirtier version of John C. Reilly's character in 'Cedar Rapids'.
That's about as much of Adam's world we see until we're hit with it: He has cancer. Worse still, it's a form so rare that no one, not even other cancer patients, have heard of it. One guy tells Adam 'the more syllables, the worse it is'. A random website suggests his chances are fifty-fifty - 'Not bad odds', Kyle reassuringly tells him and adds, 'If you were in a casino, they'd be great odds!'.
Adam is assigned a rookie doctor, Katherine (Anna Kendrick), which doesn't inspire much confidence, but being such a nice fellow he goes with the flow. Their chemistry develops naturally and before they know it, the doctor-patient barrier has been broken.
Gordon-Levitt gives a credible performance. His characterisation doesn't particularly elicit our sympathy, but I sympathised with him nonetheless. Anjelica Huston plays his doting mom. I've seen her play a similar character before, in 'Buffalo '66', but like Kendrick's repeat performance from 'Up in the Air', hers also doesn't harm the film in anyway.
The funny moments are very funny indeed, but the dramatic ones manage to top them. It's especially brilliant when you have scenes, like the one where Kyle exposes Rachael, that contain both. Philip Baker Hall's cameo as a fellow cancer patient is wonderful. Here he's cast against type and is perfect as a cantankerous, weed-ingesting, profane old man. This kind of character can't be unfunny (remember Alan Arkin in 'Little Miss Sunshine'?).
I've know a few people who have cancer. What strikes me most about them is how relaxed they are. Many people assume that knowing you have cancer, especially a terminal form, would be unbearable. But for many patients the opposite is true. They accept their situation, remind themselves that death is natural and spend every second they have left doing the things most pleasurable to them. It isn't paradoxical to hear them describe their diagnosis as 'liberating'. Their behaviour is to be admired.
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