Smiling all the way

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 2011)

Four months earlier you begin to watch a trailer about a buddy comedy about cancer with Seth Rogen. The trailer makes you laugh your way into watching the movie four months later. But the movie is not what you expected and thankfully the trailers are deceiving to make you believe that Seth Rogen is going to play a commanding role in a movie dealing with cancer. Seth Rogen holds his place firmly in the movie and brings his style of trashy humor but more often or less restrained than his other comedies. What you do surprisingly get is '50/50' the feel good movie of the year starring Seth Rogen.
Adam (Joseph Gordan-Lewitt) is a 27 year old working for a private Radio channel company along with Seth Rogen. Adam has a girlfriend with whom his relationship can be described as platonic at least by Seth Rogen's standards. His girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a paragon of selfishness and clearly has a hold on naïve Adam. When Adam discovers that he has a cancerous tumor growing in his spine, he tells Rachael she could bail herself out of their relationship. But Rachael surprises him and the audience by sticking with him, taking care of him, helping him confide about his disease with his parents and also getting him a new dog Skeletor.
Seth Rogen despises her and hence is more than happy to catch her cheating on Adam with a bearded Hippie. As soon as Adam forces Rachael out of his life, Seth takes over. At each step Seth gives Adam only one advice to get laid and tries to get him laid but more importantly for him getting himself laid using Adam. Adam is shown too kind to embrace the potent of his illness to get him laid frequently.
But Adam responds to two old men who he meets during his Hospital visits to undergo treatment. Those two men become his support system helping each other with sweets filled with weed and smoking medicinal marijuana with Seth Rogen dutifully getting high among with the three cancer buddies.
The audiences are provided a surprisingly poignant and perfect new relationship Adam slowly and naturally gets involved with his therapist. Anna Kendrick who plays the character of Dr. Katherine McKay surely knows how to use her awkward girlish behavior to manipulate the audience. She may not be the best actress around but knows how to work her way up to win the viewer's favor. Dr. McKay is a 24 year old therapist helping Adam deal with the trauma of his life threatening disease. But her inexperience adds another angle and Adam find himself slowly and naturally falling for her caring approach towards him.
The story could not be more straight forward and could be included in the category of Patch Adam. But Seth Rogen runs over the minefield of clichés carefully and we witness a very personal and poetic story told with heartfelt poignancy. '50/50' is told with a floating pace that creates a poetic rhythm to the scenes.
The story succeeds in covering all aspects of the patient's pain and trauma while keeping it light hearted. Adam's relationship with his overbearing but affable Mother and dealing with his father's senile amnesia provides memorable moments during the final reel. It is a disease that is hard to be laughed away but Will Reiser's script keeps situation and moments as real as possible and succeeds in keeping the audience smiling all the way through a very happy ending.
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