More a funny drama about cancer than a "cancer comedy"

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2012)

Adam (Levitt) is a normal 27 year old whose life is one day turned upside-down and inside-out when an appointment to see the doctor about a recurring back problem is diagnosed as a rare form of cancer, the survival rate of which, he soon discovers from the internet, is from where the movie gets its title. Adam's post-diagnosis life is full of trials which his artist girlfriend Rachel (Dallas Howard) is unable to deal with and which his wise-cracking, skirt-chasing best friend Kyle (Rogen) sees as the perfect ploy to get girls into bed. To make things worse, his mother (pitch perfectly played by Housten) wants to smother him the way she has all her life and the psychiatrist he is sent to see is a touchy-feely trainee whose every reassuring gesture is taken straight from a textbook. From the beginning the film employs humour deftly with a mine of witty, laugh-out-loud, exchanges (mostly between Levitt and Rogen) which, as Adam's condition develops, walks a fine line between levity and rawness which in a lesser film would come across as distasteful. Similarly, as we see the true depth of Kyle's friendship, and the rookie psychiatrist begins to see the person behind the case study (nudge-nudge) the story nimbly avoids the potential for cliché and superficial Hollywood smaltz and, finished off with a cool indie soundtrack, comes off as an honest and emotionally rewarding treat.