I’m quite certain I speak for everyone when I say the funniest movies out there are the ones that center on young people getting cancer and, as a result, having to face their cripplingly depressing mortality.
Okay, probably not. But “50/50” was, by far, the funniest cancer movie that I have ever seen.
The film focuses on 27-year-old writer Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who is living a healthy, cautious life with his beautiful artist girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) and “Barney Stinson-esque” best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen). That is, until he is diagnosed with a very rare form of spinal cancer and finds his whole world crashing down around him.
Despite being a movie about a young man with a very frightening, life threatening illness, “50/50” really is a laugh riot throughout. I think that the best thing the film had going for it was the fact that it decided not to be like other cancer movies. There was none of this traditional “bucket list” business. Adam doesn’t go skydiving, or go Rocky Mountain climbing or even go 2.7 seconds on a bull named “Blue Man Chu.” He just keeps living his life, as if completely ignoring the cancer will somehow make it go away.
This movie made me kind of hate Bryce Dallas Howard. I mean, in the trailers, we see Adam as he tries to use his cancer to pick up girls, so I just assumed that she would be playing his sister or something. But when the movie opens and they are playing all lovey-dovey, I knew I wasn’t going to like where this was going. We quickly find out that the two have not been dating all that long, as Adam gives her “an out” when he is diagnosed, saying that he would understand if she bailed. And all seems right in the world when she decides to stay and take care of him. However, when she refuses to go into the hospital with him for his chemotherapy and starts forgetting to pick him up from the hospital, it is clear that things are about to go sideways. The funniest contribution she makes to the film is that she buys Adam a retired racetrack greyhound named “Skeletor” and coerces him into keeping it. She does this by saying that if she returns him to the shelter he will be repeatedly raped over and over again until, eventually, he would be euthanized. Who could do that to a dog? I mean, really!
The interaction between the characters is really what drives the hilarity in the film. For instance, the first interaction between Adam and his 24-year-old hospital therapist (Anna Kendrick) is particularly hilarious because he openly mocks her, calling her Doogie Howser – to which she has no response because she doesn’t get the reference and thinks Adam is referring to doctor on staff at the hospital.
As I said, “50/50” is a hilarious movie throughout, but there is also a bit of sadness in it too. I won’t give anything away, but I must say that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance is amazing, and I guarantee that you will walk away from the theater very satisfied.