50/50 is a movie about a young guy who gets cancer. I saw it a couple of months ago, and I wanted to make sure I wrote a little review of it.
This movie is based on the filmmaker's actual experience with cancer (a sarcoma). His best friend is played by Seth Rogan, and his best friend really is Seth Rogan, so you get maximum accuracy.
Pros: This movie is bang-on in almost every single way. I was completely floored. Hair shaving, the misery of chemotherapy, the strange things people say, the humor and the pain, how doctors can't even bear to give you the news... watching this movie as a survivor was incredibly odd, and great. If you want to know what it's like to be young and have cancer, here it is.
Cons: This is a buddy movie. A very male buddy movie, with all the misogyny that this entails. All of the movie's women are either sexy, sexy and crazy, or mom. All of the doctors and patients are men. This was not my experience, though my cancer disproportionately hits women so in part it's the luck of the draw.
Also, the therapist in the story is a complete idiot, which was very disappointing to me - and to my therapist, who is a genius.
Overall, though, this movie is a really accurate picture of what it's like to get cancer young. It's all humor, physical suffering, panic, awkwardness, love and misery.
So, that's my brief review of a movie that's worth seeing. I give it four Lupron buttshots up!
