50/50 (2012)- I'm not going to lie. With all of the hype for this film, I had Will Reiser's first feature script pegged really high in my expectations. Oddly enough, as manipulated as I felt watching this film, I was entranced, and in good way. The film splits its time half and half (50/50) between comedy and emotional drama, and both are equally effective at its individual time frames. One second you will be laughing around with star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen as they pick up women and look at the lighter sides to cancer (mostly drug induced), and the next second you are watching Gordon-Levitt's moody face sigh through his mundane normal day activities. Every performance in this film is well done. I always enjoy seeing Philip Baker Hall and Anna Kendrick, and his and her sequences were particular favorites of mine, but Anjelica Huston does good work in terms of comic timing, and I'm finding Bryce Dallas Howard's choices of roles of recent times extremely brave (i.e. this and 'The Help'. It's not easy performing in so many "Villain" roles and partially humanizing them the way she does). Honestly, It's hard to point out flaws besides for the obvious ones (like I said, at times, you do feel emotionally manipulated, for example, cry now, laugh now, ohhhhh, now a cry time). It makes you think, feel, and laugh, and you walk out of it with a smile of sorts on your face. Sure, the film is not entirely happy, but it's comforting, and for a film about coping with such a dark and key word, CURRENT, subject, I think it's an important one.
- Jeff Bassin
50/50- With a premise like this, how could it be a comedy! Well, when it comes down to it, life is funny and this film was very true to life. It is a story that depicts what screenwriter Will Reiser roughly went through in his battle against a cancer with a 50/50 chance of survival. Performances all around were great giving credit to Joseph Gordon-Levitt (I guess he is not just the guy from ‘Inception’ that did not say much). Anna Kendrick also played her role well as an inexperienced therapist. Seth Rogen played his usual self with the twist that he is using his best friends illness to pick up chicks. The change in tone of the film is well, 50/50 when it comes to comedy and drama which is nice because it gives us the chance to recover before being given another healthy handful of cancer. Overall, Jonathan Levine did a great job directing because all the actors of the film gave very strong performances and the look of the film was spot on. If you are worried you will ever get cancer (with this day in age, everyone should be) than you should probably check this one out.
- Jay Bassin
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