Breaking Bad is the most awesome show on television — we can all agree on this, right? What that show does for one hour a week puts many big-budget movies to shame. But what makes it great is that it spent its first few seasons laying out the financial crises families face once cancer enters their lives. By the time viewers watched Bryan Cranston's Walter White go through treatment after treatment — generating bills his already strapped middle-class family would have to pay, whether it worked or not — it didn't seem that strange for White to start cooking meth to make ends meet.
I bring this up because ever since I started watching Bad, it's become difficult to watch anything whose protagonist undergoes chemo, surgery or other treatments without thinking, "How the hell can they afford all that?"
That's what constantly popped into my head while watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt play the resident cancer man in 50/50. His Adam, a healthy, Seattle-based go-getter who receives news that he has an ultra-rare form of cancer, appears much too young and much too broke to have to face something like this. (He works for public radio, for chrissakes! Unless he has a kickass health insurance plan, I don't see how his character could not have a mountain of debt.)
But 50/50 doesn't concentrate on those sundry matters. It focuses instead on how Adam and his loved ones cope with the diagnosis. His obnoxious slob of a best friend (producer Seth Rogen — as if anybody else could play this role) keeps his spirits up by supplying him with "medical" marijuana and getting him to use his cancer to score with chicks. His mom (Anjelica Huston) becomes more of a nagging menace than usual, forcing Adam to shut her out of this ordeal.
Meanwhile, his artist girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) tries to be supportive, only to creep around with another artist when things get too tough. (Between this and her villainous turn in The Help, Howard must be trying to corner the market in playing selfish beeyotches.) What peace of mind he can find comes from hanging with his new chemo pals (including Philip Baker Hall, dispensing pot cookies) as well as sessions with a therapist (Anna Kendrick, virtually murking the audience with her adorableness) who's younger and more scared than he is.
Nothing sounds ickier than a dramedy devoted to the brighter side of getting cancer, but director Jonathan Levine (The Wackness) gives Will Reiser's semiautobiographical script a quietly quirky sheen that keeps it from getting either too maudlin or too wacky. If anything, the matter-of-fact gallows humor only underscores the movie's sentimental moments, which Levine stages for unguarded emotional effect.
The movie might have been insufferable if it weren't keyed to Gordon-Levitt's performance. He plays the role with the infectious zeal and optimism he exudes in most everything he does, making audiences care about him every step of the way. Even though 50/50 shies away from the harsh economic truths of dealing with cancer, Gordon-Levitt's performance reminds us that even when things are at their most dire, it's always essential to keep your head up (as 2Pac would say). In this case, cancer literally couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
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