50/50 Review

Will Reiser wrote this out of his own diagnosis and the specificity shows in details no invented script reaches for: the head shaved badly by a friend in a kitchen, the chemotherapy room where the older patients have the best jokes, the girlfriend who cannot cope and is not villainized for it. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam as someone whose calm is a strategy, and the scene where it finally breaks in a parked car is the moment critics point to. Rogen plays a version of himself as the friend who is crude, unhelpful and completely present, and it is the most disciplined supporting work he has done.

Anjelica Huston takes a small role and makes the mother the film's quiet ache. The reservations are modest. Anna Kendrick's inexperienced therapist becomes a romantic resolution the story does not need, the structure is conventional under the subject matter, and Bryce Dallas Howard is written as a problem rather than a person. Jonathan Levine directs plainly and gets out of the way. What everyone agrees on is the tone, funny throughout without ever pretending the situation is anything but terrifying.