50/50: A Chance Worth Taking

Rating: 8/10 (7 October 2011)

Jonathan Levine's new dramedy 50/50 hits all the right notes. It takes the most essential of the human heartbreak and turns it into something real, emotional, and, surprisingly, hilarious.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a young man stuck in a flux between his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) and his nagging, desperate mother (Anjelica Huston). Matters only get worse, naturally, when Adam finds out he has an extremely rare form of cancer on his spine. His best friend (Seth Rogen) tries to find the positives in the situation, like getting laid out of sympathy, while Adam tries to figure everything out with his young, inexperienced psychologist (Anna Kendrick). As you can imagine, there is a good amount of heartwrenching scenes, but the thing that makes them great is they're not overcooked. It plays so much on the realism, that makes it even more powerful.
Will Reiser's script calls for a lot more than tragedy, however. It's a tricky subject to tackle, but Reiser does it almost perfectly. As much sadness that could be in a film about cancer, there is just as much, if not more, time for laughs. Seth Rogen gives his usual performance, but the personal aspect of this film (he essentially plays himself; Gordon-Levitt being a form of Reiser) takes him to a slightly new, better level of the performance he has given countless times before. The only real problem with the film is its misogynistic undertones, mainly from Rogen's character, which don't add to the film, and essentially demoralize it in a way. It was funny once, but the continuing notion seems a bit too crude for such an emotional story.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam perfectly; he is sweet and charming but you feel his struggle and the confusion as to what to do when faced with this in your life. Both supporting women give great performances. Anjelica Huston plays Adam's mother with a desperation to find someone; her husband has Alzheimer's and her son now with cancer, it drives all of Huston's choices and though she plays her kind of crazy, you understand all the while. Anna Kendrick gives her finest performance. Very grounded, but so well-crafted, her performance is not loud in any way. I often forgot that there was a celebrity behind the character, that's how great she was. If Up in the Air didn't prove Kendrick as a rising star, 50/50 has to.
Director Jonathan Levine doesn't seem to intervene too much in this film. The film feels well-guided but not super-imposed, like many other directors feel. The film feels so true to life, to the subtle triumphs that everyone with cancer has to at least tackle. He doesn't turn it into a sappy epic, he allows the characters to play as they would play in real life, and that is maybe the most resonant of them all. A