50/50

[Eric Boellner]

Really enjoyed this little film. It tried a little hard to be "moving," but still made some good emotional points. Every time Seth Rogen was on-screen, I laughed my ass off.

Really annoyed by all those "grand" shots where the camera sweeps up above the character for absolutely no reason. Aside from that, some nice work - the script was probably the best part, though I was thrown off a bit by how fast it moved. Maybe that was the point.

 

[randin]

Yeah, I caught a preview a while back, and I agree. My wife and I were ready to be critical as she just went through two nasty years of treatment for leukemia. We laughed and well, she cried. I almost cried, which is saying something. So it did hit a lot of the right emotional points for those of us who had been through something similar. One point that I liked was that he was a really nice guy at the beginning, and pretty much stayed that way with a few fairly realistic rough patches along the way, rather than the typical "a-hole gets cancer and learns to be a better person" or "saint gets cancer and dies heroically." It was a bit sappy and too feel good about the whole thing at times, but all in all, I really enjoyed it and commend everyone involved for doing it.

As always, though, we were disappointed in how far they went to show the effects of chemo. Yeah, he shaved his head, but in reality you do it because ALL your hair is falling out. ALL of it, not just the top of your head. So eyebrows always bug us in films, and the extreme closeup of the needle going in his arm that showed all the hair there made me laugh. So you get the normal lines about how horrible the cancer patient looks, but to those of us who've been through it, he looked perfectly fine! Just a little pale and with a shaved head. Look at what Christian Bale did to himself for the Mechanic just to play a cray person in a surreal film. Why have a I never seen an actor "brave" enough to do that for a film about something that happens to real people every day?

 

[Kegan]

Saw it last night and enjoyed it. I thought it did try a little hard to be moving, but overall it was a good film. My dad had prostate cancer and went through treatment, so the scenes where he was on his way to treatment hit home for me, but there was a delicate balance. It seemed like they didn't want to push the envelope too much, for fear of a poor public reaction. While overall a good movie, I don't think it emphasized how brutal cancer really is.

Kegan