A Truly Good Movie!...Don't Let the Bad Reviews Fool You.

Rating: 9/10 (21 April 2015)

After watching this movie, I won't say that I'm surprised to see so many negative reviews. People who look to this film for cliché moments and things to gripe about will find them, but only because they're not capable of getting beyond what they perceive as unrealistic story-telling to see the true essence of what this film is trying to express; a story of suffering and of trying to find purpose in life, even when that purpose has to change and adapt to the suffering.
In no way do I see this film as pretentious or nauseating. I think it tells a very honest story, even if it does so in a dramatic way. It's not a perfect film and the acting isn't always profound, but the story itself stays so true to its characters that I think the end result is a film which tells a very powerful story in an almost- perfect way.
Personally, I very much enjoyed it. I wouldn't give it a 10, but it's a solid 9. At no point during this movie did I wish it was over, and by the end of it I felt like I was able to gain something very positive...Which, by the way, should be the objective of any film. If realism is all you care about then watch the news. In my opinion, all of the negative reviews on this film are absolutely baseless. It may not be for everyone, but it is for anyone who has emotional depth or an appreciation for human experiences outside of their own...However idealistic they may seem.
And just to add some perspective -- I'm a 27 year old male with no close experience with cancer, or really anything expressed in this film, and I still was able to find something in it that I could appreciate on my own level. It's not a movie that's just for one kind of person, and I don't think it was created to be that way. I think this is a film for all people...And it's well worth the two hours it took to watch it. It will certainly leave you feeling some kind of way.