50/50 Review

I think it’s fair to say that 50/50 is far, far better than a lot of people expected it to be. While the cast looked promising, there seemed to be a definite tendency to write this kind of film off as a bromance with cheap depth and little heart, which would have surely incurred the wrath of cancer support groups attacking it for trivialising terminal illness. I was one of the people fearing the worst. I was wrong. 50/50 is a ballsy, one-of-a-kind film filled to the brim with heart, soul, laughter and tears.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a young, fit, healthy man, with a hot girlfriend and a cool job at a radio station, but when he goes to the doctor for treatment on a painful back, he is shocked to find out that he has a rare type of spine cancer. As he puts it, ‘I don’t smoke...I don’t drink...I recycle.’ With his chances of survival only 50%, he embarks upon a well-trodden cinematic journey of anger, depression and chemotherapy with his foul-mouthed best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), his flaky girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), his overbearing mother, Diane (Anjelica Huston) and his hospital-appointed but vastly inexperienced therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick).

Another screenwriter, given the concept, characters and plot fully fleshed out for him to work dialogue in for, could not have crafted a film half as good as this. Only someone who has lived through this could possibly understand the mental, physical and emotional trauma that Adam goes through during the film, and screenwriter Will Reiser has. The film is based on his own struggle with cancer and, though it follows a fairly standard three act structure, perfectly balances male comedy on the juvenile side with shattering emotion of the sort more often reserved for ‘real’ films with ‘real’ actors without ever straying into hysteria or melodrama, with credit also going to director Jonathan Levine for his sensitive direction. It pulls back at the right moments to preserve its credibility and power.

Seth Rogen, who as Reiser’s best friend played this role for real, appears to be playing the role of crude buffoon he’s so often displayed in the past, but displays touches of genuinely heartfelt acting in the emotional final third. Kendrick gives another solid performance, reminding us why she was nominated for an Oscar last year, while Huston’s scenes with Adam are the most emotionally devastating of the film. 50/50 as a whole, though, belongs to Gordon-Levitt, who brings such humour and pathos to the Adam’s journey that it would not be surprising, despite the Academy’s comedy snobbery, to see him on the Best Actor shortlist next year. 

In the kind of film normally reserved for audiences of women to bawl their eyes out with their friends, this astounding film is the surprise of the year, and you’d be hard-pushed to find a showing that doesn’t have at least one man asking his girlfriend for a tissue. 50/50 is beautifully acted, wonderfully written and sure to be completely underrated by everybody until they actually sit down and watch it.

5/5