Great performances, pretty poor script

Rating: 5/10 (24 November 2011)

As a cancer survivor who who went through chemo and radiation for lung malignancy four years ago, I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. In addition, I think Joseph Gordon Leavitt is an awesome actor. There are some great performances in this film, as well as one or two very realistic scenes (the isolation/alienation, the very real moment where he loses it in the car and finally proclaims he's 'tired of of it all'), but that's about all I could identify with. Chemo is an incredibly powerful (and, as Melissa Ethridge puts it "barbaric") drug. The longer you're on it, the more cells it continues to destroy, and it basically slowly kills you. I saw the character sick after his first infusion, and then doing quite well throughout the rest of his illness. The opposite is true; you get worse, not more functional, and weaker. Your sex drive plummets, despite the character's desire to find women to hook up with (although I admit, when he finally did, things didn't exactly succeed), as well as your appetite, your sense of taste and smell. None of that was portrayed. Lastly, the tumor that he had on his spine did not shrink from the chemo and continued to metastasize, which is a concerning response; despite his surgery being semi-successful at the end, there was no mention of the high possibility that because of its size it had a high chance of continuing to spread. The film gave the viewer the impression that because they were able to remove it, he was "cured," which was definitely not necessarily the case. The other glaring inaccuracy in the film is a typical Hollywood one: the therapist begins a romantic relationship with his/her client. This is considered completely unethical and would result in the therapist losing her license as a result; so if this was based on a "true story," it's definitely been embellished for the screen. Seth Rogen and Anjelica Huston were, as always, terrific. But I'd really like to see a Hollywood film made that portrays cancer as it really is. This is definitely not it.