Review of 50/50 (2011) by Shiira — 15 Dec 2011

The prognosis for Vivian Bearing's survival is far from 50/50. Right from the start, the scholar puts the audience on notice: "I have stage IV metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five." In facing death, Professor Bearing is blunt; she dashes our hopes for a Hollywood ending.

Statistically speaking, the odds of her living through this hovers around 99/1, or worse. But still, she gets laughs. She's funny. Who knew? Just us. With no loved ones to speak of, Vivian, by default, speaks to the viewer, in hospital rooms without fourth walls, which allows the lifelong educator to deliver a seminar on her "uncompromising" life, filled with jokes.

That's the remarkable thing about Emma Thompson's performance in Mike Nichols' adaptation of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Wit"(by Margaret Edson): the gallows humor gets provided by the patient, whereas in "50/50", it's Kyle who offsets the maudlin situation by concentrating on the perks of having a friend who just might be dying.

To say the least, "50/50" is irreverent about life and death. Adam's illness provides a boost for his sex life. For the longest time, you're never sure if there's a method to Kyle's madness.

Played by Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Adam would be more apt to sing "Here Comes Your Man"(like in "500 Days of Summer") than "Wind Beneath My Wings" on karaoke night. "Beaches", it is not.

In James Brooks' "Terms of Endearment", against a Manhattan backdrop, Debra Winger implores a friend that "it's alright to talk about the cancer," but is it alright to joke about something so "insidious" and "pernicious".

"Lance Armstrong, he's always getting it," Kyle, with offhanded aplomb, tells his buddy, as if schwannoma(a nerve sheath tumor that's normally benign, but in Adam's case, is malignant, and located on the spine) was nothing to worry about.

And then, as another example, he uses Patrick Swayze, which many will find in bad taste, yet for Kyle, who is trying desperately to soothe himself and Adam out on the sidewalks of Seattle, it's not a joke; he just flat-out didn't know that the beloved actor had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer.

While some moviegoers may find his "faux pas" darkly amusing, and others, an uproarious joke that is symptomatic of an Internet culture which breeds barbarity, you don't see either pedestrian laughing.

Kyle looks devastated. He just allowed death back into the room, causing added anxiety for both. You can see the wheels spinning in Kyle's head, as he tries to fix this rift in his shaky rhetoric. But from our side of the screen, most people will be staring back in horror.

The joke about Swayze is an open-and-shut case of being "too soon". As for cancer itself, however, a disease that dates back to ancient Greece, it's fair game, arguably, for a comedic filmmaker, since more than enough time has passed.

Conversely, a lighthearted movie about AIDS would be tricky. The relatively young disease lacks the historicity of cancer, therefore, making light of somebody's lesions would indeed be "too soon".

"50/50', on the other hand, is right on time. The cancer genre needed this. Unlike AIDS, there really is no canonical films to speak of; no "Philadelphia" to hang a hat on its bald head.

"Wit", albeit a searing masterpiece, may be better known as a stage play. And "Terms of Endearment", in spite of its Oscar-laden pedigree, seems awfully facile in its depiction of a young woman's cancer; it's movie cancer, the kind without the chemotherapy sessions that gives rise to the nausea and the baldness, which "Wit" depicts, and "50/50" subverts.

When Vivian throws up, it's not the vomit, but the wit stemming from her serial regurgitations that has us cautiously guffawing. Words, not actions, make the professor funny. She's too dignified for either comic subgenre: the gross-out comedy and the stoner flick.

And that's a shame. Life has passed her by. She doesn't have to "barf [her] brains out", but drugs, even the remedying kind, is verboten for her. Nancy Reagan would love this woman. By contrast, Seth Rogen, who lights up in "Pineapple Express"(and many other films), keeps on smoking, but this time it's for a worthwhile cause, since the pot is for medicinal purposes, not recreational.

In retrospect, the soft drug belongs in "Terms of Endearment", not "Poltergeist". And it belongs in "Wit", too. Cannabis critics, however, will point out that Adam is having too much fun.

Medicinal marijuana, they'll say, excuses people to have pot parties. Vivian's idea of fun is more their speed. The professor makes a game out of guessing her emesis output. To wit, she needs to watch a Cheech & Chong movie, not deconstruct one more 17th century sonnet.

In "50/50" the bromance movie grows up. More than ever, it's easy to see how a close male friend can be like a surrogate girlfriend, as Adam finds himself between women, and only has Kyle to lean on.