Released: September 30th, 2011
Rated: R
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna
Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston
Directed by: Jonathan Levine
Written by: Will Reiser
Personal Bias Alert: dislikes manchild jokes, likes Joseph Gordon-Levitt
4.5 of 10
What’s
funny about cancer? “First of all, it
starts with that hard C sound, that K.
That is a comedy principle,” said Sarah Silverman in her Stand Up to
Cancer video. She goes on to tell a few
more jokes while weaving in a serious message, mirroring in three minutes what
it takes 50/50 100 minutes to
do. Now, I know that Silverman’s video
and 50/50 are entirely different
mediums of work, which partially explains the time difference, but it also highlights
how much more a film is expected to do. 50/50 tries to do more, but too much of
it feels false to get across any larger meaning.
Much
ado was made during the film’s release about the story being based on writer
Will Reiser’s own cancer incident (he recovered before writing the
script). The story loosely follows
Reiser and friend/co-star Seth Rogen’s experience, focusing on how the
unexpected cancer diagnosis of 20-something Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) effects
his friends, family, and himself. Perhaps
this gave me some false expectations. I
was hoping for a funny, insightful film that felt close to reality, and what I
got was a formulaic, manchild comedy with an affecting ending. Needless to say, I was disappointed.
My
biggest problem with the film, which would have bothered me even without my
incorrect expectations, was just how unrealistic the whole thing was. And I don’t mean the cancer scare. I know that 20-somethings get cancer. It’s the insufferable tropes surrounding
Adam’s predicament that annoyed the hell out of me. Between the inattentive girlfriend, the doctor
with horrible bedside manners, the overbearing mother, the manchild best
friend, and the terrible therapist, I couldn’t find any genuine characters for
Adam to interact with. Every scene felt
unnatural, and, well, written. There are
few things that annoy me more in a movie than being able to see the strings,
and this film leaves them pretty bare.
Moreover,
this film just felt nasty to me. It
judges all its characters, hard, for the vast majority of its runtime. The fact that they’re all so one-note, and
that their notes are so negative, left me little room to care about them at
all. I mean, why should I care about a
mother who overreacts to everything whenever she comes onscreen? She’s not my mother, and Adam is perfectly
fine with ignoring her, so I am too. At
least the best friend played by Rogan makes some effort, but he fails so
miserably that I just wanted him to leave Adam alone. Honestly, I didn’t even buy that those two
would be friends, cancer or not.
Then
you have the technical aspects of the film, which too often stick out and add
to the unreality of the whole thing. I
made two separate notes about how much I hated the music in this film, once
after the cancer reveal and once in the scene where Adam’s high. Although, the music wasn’t the only thing
wrong with the overdone ‘Adam’s high’ scene.
Between the hackneyed cinematography, the ridiculous slow-motion
chuckles, and that music, I thought I had stepped into a happy version of Reefer Madness.
The
only spark in the first 75 minutes of this film are the scenes between Adam and
Katherine, the young therapist played by Anna Kendrick. Gordon-Levitt and Kendrick are the only ones
with enough screen time and talent to overcome their thin characters, and
there’s moments when their interactions feel genuine. Add in that these two are the only characters
allowed to show a shred of decency before the ending, and it’s no wonder I
didn’t care about the rest of the movie.
And
let’s talk about that ending. There’s
such a sharp tone change in the last 25 minutes that it felt like a different
movie. The raunchy comedy is abandoned
in favor of the big, emotional ending, which is a bit easy and familiar given
the setup, but Gordon-Levitt sells it so well that it’s hard not to be
moved. I actually enjoyed this part of
the film, probably because the characters around Adam were suddenly allowed to
act like actual human beings. They were
still flawed, but their efforts inexplicably start to amount to something. It’s not at all consistent with the rest of
the film, but I was so happy that it was finally working that I threw up my
hands and went with it. I just wish the
rest of the film had actually set this ending up.
Other
Notes:
Ø What
world does this film exist in? No doctor
would be that oblivious while revealing a cancer diagnosis, and no one would do
what Rogan’s character does with that picture.
Ø The
crude humor felt out of place.
Ø I
liked Kendrick and Gordon-Levitt’s relationship, but I’m not sure about the
ethics of it. I mean, he was her
patient.
