50/50
AMC 7, September 30, 2011
Movie #71 for 2011
With a cancer movie featuring SETH ROGEN (Green Hornet), you pretty much know you’re going to:
a. cry a bit; and
b. laugh a bit; and, if you’re like me, also
c. find Seth Rogen very, very annoying a bit.
Crying in a cancer movie is a given. What I’m more interested in is how it happens - do they take the time to build characters that you care about and that you care what happens to, or is just taken for granted that you’ll care because cancer sucks and is inherently tragic? Almost every cancer movie I’ve seen is option number two. 50/50, refreshingly, is option number one.
The ever-awesome JOSEPH GORDON LEVITT ((500) Days of Summer, Inception, pictured with Rogen) is Adam, a 27-year-old radio documentary producer who has just found out he has a large, dangerous tumor in his spine. His girlfriend BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD (The Help), his besty Rogen and his mum ANJELICA HOUSTON (The Darjeeling Limited) all freak out in their own ways, but Adam doesn’t, not even in sessions with his hospital-appointed cancer therapist ANNA KENDRICK (Up in the Air, Scott Pilgrim). So what gives?
The casting of Rogen was a little mysterious to me until I read that the movie is based on the real story of the screenwriter WILL REISER, a friend of Rogen’s. I would have preferred Rogen in a different gear to his usual schtick, but he and Levitt do pretty well together. Despite Rogen (and to some extent Howard), and despite a bit of shaky start, the film is in the very safe hands of Kendrick, Houston and Levitt. A film like this shows how important casting is - if someone else had played Adam more tight, or more angry, or more scared, or more tragic, the film would have lost its fine and refreshing balance and ended up as option number two. Because crying in a cancer movie is a given, but caring, oddly, is not.
