A funny way to treat cancer in '50/50'

A cancer bromance starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, "50/50" may sound like a bad idea: "Terms of Endearment" meets "Superbad." It's certainly contrived, but -- surprisingly -- it's never calculating. It's a funny, honest and at times moving account of a young dude's battle with the Big C.

Gordon-Levitt plays 27-year-old Adam, a semiambitious journalist who works at a Seattle public radio station with audio editor Kyle (Rogen). Adam's girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a budding artist. Basically, his life is a pleasant blur of morning cappuccinos and late-night hangs -- until a doctor informs him of an "encephalopod-like object spreading down your spine."

That becomes the turning point in Adam's life and also in "50/50." The loosely autobiographical script, by Will Reiser (he and his friend Rogen co-produced), asks a simple question: How will Adam react? He isn't a sports hero, a family man or anything like the usual high-stakes figures who fight cancer in the movies. How does an unattached, carefree member of Generation Next deal with death?

Gordon-Levitt and Rogen, as friends facing their first genuine crisis, make an appealing yin-yang team. Kyle, the jocular shoulder puncher, encourages Adam to play the sympathy card with girls ("You gotta get into the cancer thing faster!") instead of brooding over Rachel's graceless exit. When Adam does get lucky, however, his chemo-weakened body can't handle the action. "50/50" may be named for Adam's survival chances, but it also describes the movie's mix of glib humor and painful reality, deftly handled by director Jonathan Levine (2008's bittersweet comedy "The Wackness").

This slightly thin movie is padded out by characters like Adam's distraught mother (Anjelica Houston), an elderly pot enthusiast (Philip Baker Hall) and the obligatory love interest (Anna Kendrick, charming nonetheless as a fledgling therapist). "50/50" feels compelled to touch all the bases of its combined genres, but it's at its best when simply telling its story.

Initially, a doctor told "50/50" screenwriter Will Reiser that he had lymphoma. For a week, he thought he was terminal. But after submitting to numerous tests and seeing, by Reiser's estimate, a dozen doctors, lymphoma was ruled out, the tumor was found and the surgery scheduled. If he hadn't been fearless and persistent, he says, he might not have found the true cause of his illness so quickly.

While Reiser puttered along, wearing a back brace and attempting to regain his strength post-surgery, he and his close pal Seth Rogen talked frequently about how the whole life-altering Big C experience -- with its sobering reminders of mortality mixed with cringeworthy questions from acquaintances about Reiser's bucket list -- could be made into a motion picture.

"It was never, like, as simple as we'll just make a movie about what's happening," says Rogen, who co-produced "50/50" and helped develop the script. "It was, you know, a nerdy Jew gets cancer and becomes a hit man." Eventually, Rogen and Reiser realized that the best way to tell the story was as honestly as possible.

"We don't need to have him be a hit man," Rogen says they concluded. "We can just have him work at NPR."

So in 2008, Reiser created his pseudo-alter ego and wrote the script.