REVIEW: 50/50
Cancer is never an easy subject to tackle on film, not least in comedy, yet director Jonathan Levine and writer Will Reiser pull it off with 50/50, a comedy/drama in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a seemingly healthy young man suddenly diagnosed with a rare form of the disease.
Loosely based on screenwriter Reiser’s own experience as a cancer survivor, 50/50 follows both the arduous journey of Gordon-Levitt’s treatment and the effect that his diagnosis has on him and the people in his life. Reiser’s off-screen best friends Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are credited as producers, and Rogen co-stars in the wise-cracking best friend role he presumably played in real life. As weepy as it is funny, the group’s irreverent sense of humour and proximity to the subject matter make for a film that is undoubtedly emotional without ever feeling too saccharine or hackneyed; the interplay between Rogen and Levitt’s characters, for instance, is not only funny but rings true to life, and seeing a character joke around one minute and enter chemotherapy the next makes for an emotional gut punch of its own kind.
However, 50/50 is a film that lives or dies on its performances, and Levine wisely allows the actors to take centre stage. Gordon-Levitt’s character anchors the movie, at once protagonist, straight man and emotional core, and he pulls it off perfectly. Likewise Rogen, the primary source of the film’s laughs, yet again shows himself to be both a legitimate comic talent and an immensely likeable screen presence. Detractors may cite a lack of range and a distinct similarity between most of Rogen’s past characters, but here it works, and the moments where his character shows vulnerability serve as some of the more emotional points in the film. Perhaps the stand-out performance, however, belongs to Anjelica Huston, whose fretting mother slowly reveals herself to be more and more layered and sympathetic as the film progresses. This foregrounding of performance doesn’t necessarily mean that 50/50 is flatly directed, and the film certainly has flair; key sequences, such as those in which Gordon-Levitt’s character undergoes treatment, are particularly inventive in using visuals to translate the character’s very specific mental state to the audience.
50/50 probably won’t be for everyone – some will simply be put off by Rogen & Goldberg’s comic sensibility, and others may balk at the few points in which the movie veers towards clichéd Hollywood sentimentality – but on the whole the film is honest and sincerely moving. A delicate balancing act of levity and reverence, 50/50 ultimately proves itself to be one of 2011’s best; a funny, heartfelt and emotionally engaging movie that offers a tonally unique look at a well-worn subject.
Words: Josh Hicks
