The feel good movie of the year is about...cancer? Might very well be. Even though it doesn't come out until September 30th, I was fortunate to have a chance to check out 50/50 a couple of weeks ago. Formerly titled "I'm With Cancer" and "Live With It", the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man in his late 20s who is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given a 50/50 chance to survive. Seth Rogen stars as his self absorbed best friend, who seems to be oblivious of the many trials his buddy is going through and just wants to act like everything is normal. If there's going to be a sore spot with folks, it'll be Rogen's character.
Think about how hard of a film this will be to market. Comedies about disease are few and far between for a reason. They have a tendency to be mawkish(lookin' at you, Patch Adams
) or not serious enough(Love and Other Drugs
). But I think writer Will Reiser(the story's loosely based on his life) and director Jonathan Levine(The Wackness
) have found the right balance of salty and sweet. There's very little emotional manipulation. And do I even have to say that Gordon-Levitt gives yet another flawless performance? I'd love to see him nominated for this. A new trailer has been released for the film, which you can check out below...PLOT
Inspired by personal experiences, 50/50 is an original story about friendship, love, survival and finding humor in unlikely places. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen star as best friends whose lives are changed by a cancer diagnosis. Rogen also serves as producer, along with Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin. Jonathan Levine directs from a script by Will Reiser. “We worked with Will on Da Ali G show, and it was shortly after that we learned he was sick.” Rogen recalls. “As shocking, sad, confusing and generally screwed up as it was; we couldn’t ignore that because we were so ill-equipped to deal with the situation, funny things kept happening. Will got better, and when he did, we thought the best way to pull something good out of the situation was to get him to write a screenplay. Ideally we wanted to make a film that would be as funny, sad, and hopefully as honest as the experience we went through. As soon as the script was completed, it quickly became a passion project for all of us. It helped us come to terms with Will’s struggle as well as our own experiences.” 50/50 is the story of a guy’s transformative and, yes, sometimes funny journey to health. 50/50 draws its emotional core from Will Reiser’s own experience with cancer and reminds us that friendship and love, no matter what bizarre turns they take, are the greatest healers.
