50/50 Review

This review contains some spoilers. Going the funny route with a story about cancer is a tough sell. One of two things will happen: You'll get a Terms of Endearment and win the crowd, or you'll get an obvious melodrama that would make Lifetime cringe.

Director Jonathan Levine's 50/50 pulls off the former effortlessly, securing the film bragging rights as one of the year's best.

Based on writer Will Reiser's experiences, 50/50 strikes a delicate "laugh/cry" balance with its telling of a young life interrupted (then woken up) by cancer. That young life belongs to Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a guy who is not so much sheltered as he is perfectly happy dipping a toe into any situation and calling it "living." Adam works for NPR in Seattle, crafting stories people listen to for 5 seconds while at a red light. His best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) gets high and makes Adam laugh, a lot. Adam's girlfriend (the always reliable Bryce Dallas Howard) is a struggling artist with less than love in her heart for her man.

So when Adam gets the bad news from his unsympathetic doctor, the movie explores how getting this close to dying is the best time for Adam to really invest in living. A lesser movie would have taken the buddy comedy dynamic here too far into sitcom territory, a place where it easily could go once Adam's girlfriend gets caught cheating on him, and enter Adam's overbearing mother (Angelica Huston) to take on a caretaking (read: smothering) role.

But Levine and Reiser challenge that by investing their comedic situations with a realism that's become a lost art in films lately. Houston's character is overbearing with her love because it's the only way she knows how to give it; she has a husband who can't talk to her and a son who won't. I won't spoil how that relationship finds resolution, I will just say that when it does you will be torn between laughing and crying. (Don't do both. I did. They needed that Medical Droid from Empire to fix me.)

The emotional core of the film is owned by the scenes between Adam and his newbie psychiatrist, played by Up In The Air's Anna Kendrick. Adam is the young doc's third patient, so naturally the two awkwardly question how they can help each other. But as the movie progresses, the doctor needs her patient to fix her just as much as he needs fixing, and one of the most unforced romances in recent film develops as a result.

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50/50's brave, warts-and-all approach to the pains of treatment finds its funniest and most rewarding moments toward the third act. Other comedies tend to take the overcooked, "kitchen sink" approach to wrapping up here, 50/50 instead slows down a bit and gives every character a chance to mature in surprisingly laugh-out-loud ways. And in turn, every actor gets at least one "For Your Consideration" moment to shine.

The movie lives and dies on one performance, however, and that's Levitt's. This guy... you could argue that he went Full Method for this one and got himself cancer, he's that good. Adam has to pinball through every one of the Five Stages of Loss, sometimes more than once, and do it in a way that makes us laugh with and root for the character. Levitt, as we've seen in Inception and (500) Days of Summer, has this enviable ability to give any story the exact amount of whatever it needs to be told. He just hits this sweet spot every time, and it's going to suck having to choose between him and Drive's Gosling come awards season.

50/50 isn't about cancer as much as it is about that "unknown" element we let define ourselves through inaction; that thing that holds us back and gives us more opportunities we wish we did take than ones we outright owned. At times, scenes surrounding these larger thematic issues will make you laugh, they'll make you cry. And they'll do it without manipulating you with telegraphed beats or forced catharsis. For a movie, 50/50 is as real as facing this situation gets.

If only more movies could be half as great as this one.

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