50/50 (2011) (R) ★★★★

Review Date: September 30th, 2011

As devourers of pop culture, we're quick to categorize our entertainment for our own safety. Comedy, drama, thriller, sci-fi, horror—everything we have the chance to consume has a label to ensure that we know exactly what we're getting.

Occasionally, a movie defies classification. While not a revolutionary piece of cinema, 50/50 is especially gratifying simply because of its abandonment of genre and the baggage that comes with owning one. The movie starts with a simple inciting incident: one day, 27-year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns that he has a life-threatening tumor growing on his spine. Of course, the news doesn't sit well with the public radio producer, who's in the middle of work on an exciting piece for his station, just adjusting to living with his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) and sees his life as a lengthy, exciting prospect. Adam never smokes, he waits to cross the street, he always tucks his shirts in and keeps his sweater vests tidy—what did he do to deserve this?

But Adam doesn't go on a quest to find his true self or spend days writing a bucket list. He lives his life—and its friends and family who feel the tremors of his disease. Rachael quickly finds herself off balance and unable to cope with Adam's situation, while his mother, Diane (Anjelica Huston), tries to coddle him, finding a new opportunity she never found with her Alzheimer's-stricken husband. His co-workers throw him a guilt-induced party.

At a total loss, Adam finds comfort in his pal Kyle (Seth Rogen, essentially playing himself), who uplifts his spirits through dedication, marijuana and loose women. Nothing seems to out-weigh the punch-in-the-gut feeling of losing his hair to chemotherapy or barely being able to walk around his house without feeling winded, but Adam stays afloat thanks to Kyle's incessant goofiness and a newfound friendship in his therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick). Equally out of water in her new job, the two bond over their discovery of humanism in the scientific process of beating cancer and, while the growth of their relationship is one of the few things in the film that feels remotely contrived, it gives Adam hope in the face of his possibly-fatal surgery.

50/50 isn't sugar sweet, nor is it stone cold serious. Director Jonathan Levine allows the events to unfold in a unique and reserved realism, allowing the movie to bounce from laugh-out-loud funny (thanks in a large part to Rogen's star talent in a supporting role) to tearjerker drama without any broad segues. Gordon-Levitt has established himself as one of modern cinema's best watchers, the type of actor who can float through a picture without making too much a ruckus, but who's identifiable and helps us understand his surroundings. But he fits right in to the Apatow-style comedy Rogen and Levine conjure up throughout the movie. In one scene, Adam chows down on some pot brownies courtesy of his elderly chemo-mates (Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer), leading him to groove around the hospital hall, spaced out and loving it. It's an uproarious moment, but poignant too—finally, Adam can let go of a bit of his grief.

Providing a foundation for 50/50's minimalist tactics are the supporting cast. Howard once again proves her versatility, turning an unsympathetic character into a dimensionalized presence. What Rachael does in the film isn't admirable, but thanks to Howard's performance, not entirely unreasonable. Huston and Kendrick are strong and grounded enough that, when Adam begins to check out of life as surgery looms, they don't disappear from the film. But it's Rogen who really steals the show, perhaps because his friend and 50/50 writer Will Reiser based the movie on their real life experiences, but the comedy-first actor steps up later in the film when the weight of reality starts to bring everyone down.

50/50 isn't a comedy or a drama, but a portrait of real people surviving real hardships. Shedding a few tears over the course of the film is perfectly acceptable—the jokes are that funny and the emotion that powerful.

Hollywood.com rated this film 4 stars.