i can't believe i'm doing another review to add to the 12 pp already here...

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2012)

but i read a few of the ones in the beginning and no one said some of the things i thought or felt, sooooo... it's the most fun I(emphasized) ever had with a cancer movie... and most of the time i felt guilty about feeling that way...which is interesting. i've been on both sides of serious medical, life changing events... as a health professional and in my personal life... and i think that what's MOST attractive about this film to people is that it's a rubbernecker's dream... we get to be a fly on the wall during the course of this person's cancer crisis. and that's a euphemism for a voyeur. we know, whether consciously or not, that WE don't have cancer. and we're being entertained AND scared. and it's STILL? not US! and i don't know HOW...but the whole movie i KNEW he wasn't going to die...it just didn't lend itself to that possibility on some subliminal level. tell me i'm not right... no one in Hollywood is going to lose money on what gets presented in the first 7/8ths because of what happens in the very last part. don't get me wrong. i had a good time with it. but that's my point. it was a bit TOO safe. the characters caricaturish/broad stroke.. but i never felt it went into the unrealistic area...i've seen all sorts of things happen in situations like this. so i wouldn't say there's any predicting specifics. tendencies, yes. specifics, no... so they just roller coastered us through... what a fun ride... ooooooooooh! THAT was scary... wow! THAT was fun... THIS is awkward. but now it's fun again... emotional ping pong well played...
and while some people criticized rogen's character as being TOO one dimensional(and an uncaring, walking penis. maybe not QUITE in those words, though), a)you must've grown up somewhere other than a city... b)HIS way of coping was by doing JUST the opposite of dying...it was having sex. it's how LOTS of people attempt to balance out the pain and anxiety in their lives...it wasn't that he didn't CARE... we get to see all this when Joseph's character crash's at rogen's character's place and he finds the book about all doing the cancer together... i could feel the room get warm and fuzzy at that moment... you know the movie 'terms of endearment'?