It's good, but it could've been better.

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2011)

I know, I know; you're saying "Mister Blueghost, what in the world didn't you like about this film?" Well, first off I did like it for what it was. BUT, and this is the director in me talking, you don't survive stage 4 cancer of any kind. Personal experience tells me this. If the plot of the film had been given a slightly higher emphasis instead of a casual nod (i.e. the mechanics of what the cancer was actually doing to our leading man), then the film would've shined.
As it stands now, we have a writer (or writing team) that dropped the ball on a number of issues. First of all films focus on the emotional elements of all stories that they tell, but here we got a real sugar coated ending that makes for a film that I really wouldn't care to see again. Modern marketing dictates that we get an upbeat film to keep drawing in ticket goers. Ergo, what's-his-name survives not only the surgery, but the cancer itself. No ambiguity about it.
But hey, it's essentially another chick flick married to the buddy-flick genre. Implication; happy ending.
But, what would've made for a better market draw over the long run would have been the ambiguity of survival at the end. Dude gets the girl at the end. Dude survives to get the girl. But we're never privy to the entire cancer experience, just his perspective on how it effects his social life, and nothing more. We don't see his personal insights, not really. We see his mood flux, but not a different perspective on the world. We don't get the sense that he's changed too much for his entire experience. We really don't.
He lives. He comes out on top, and his friend is the best friend anyone in the world could ask for. But for all that we don't see a real adjustment in character. Which begs the question if there really needs to be on in the first place. Meh, maybe not, but if you survive a life threatening experience, then you're bound to have a different outlook on how the world looks, feels, smells, sounds and just vibes in general. I'm not sure we really get that.
The film is what it is. It was a little too raunchy in terms of the sexual language for my taste, but it got its point across with great alacrity.
My vote is that this is a sugar coated cancer film that could have been much more than it ultimately became, but it's a decent flick for what it is.
Rated-R for language and some mild sexual situations, it's not exactly a family film.
Take a chance on it, and judge for yourself.
*eidt; 11/27/11* p.s. a bit of a remake of the Italian film "One for Two".