Has enough humor and heart to elevate it beyond similarly-themed films

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2015)

While it could have gone the route of being maudlin and going for a cheap emotional gut punch, 50/50 is a fairly well-written, honest portrayal of someone who finds out they have cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a guy who "doesn't smoke...and recycles" but finds out that he has a rare form of spinal cancer. Together with his friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) and a novice therapist (Anna Kendrick), he eventually comes to terms with his condition despite the many setbacks he experiences. Chief among these is a cheating girlfriend (Dallas Bryce Howard). I mean, what girl would cheat on her boyfriend after he finds out he has cancer? That was pretty low, and made her character extremely unlikeable. Of course, most of the central cast is unlikeable in some way. Adam becomes kind of a prick once he finds out about his condition, although this is somewhat understandable. Less understandable, although it's intrinsic to the type of characters Seth Rogen usually plays, is Kyle who uses Adam's condition as a way to hook up with women. Even though I can understand that someone who finds out they have a potentially terminal illness might use it to score, actually seeing it play out in a movie was kind of crass to me. Thankfully, the film doesn't stay there. Generally speaking, the plot was rather predictable in terms of the romantic aspect. You just kind of know that after Adam breaks up with his girlfriend he'll eventually end up with his cute therapist because that's just the way things work. I can almost forgive it since Anna Kendrick played such a dorky, likable person, but clichés are still clichés. I also didn't buy her for a second as someone working on their doctorate. Still, the performances were generally good and I couldn't really find fault with anyone. What really saved the film for me from being just a run-of-the-mill "cancer comedy" (kind of odd to see those two words juxtaposed) were a couple of key scenes late in the movie which provided the emotional weight needed to anchor the film and provided a counter-balance to the crude humor that one would expect from a comedy starring Seth Rogen. But even though Seth Rogen is in the film, this is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's movie all the way and he does a great job of carrying it. Overall, I liked it a little more than I thought I might at first. The plot is rather predictable and cliché at times, but there was a lot of humor and heart that lifted it beyond other similar films.