50/50
Short description
Adam Lerner is twenty-seven and in good health when back pain sends him to a doctor, who delivers a cancer diagnosis. The news upends the life he had been comfortably leading, replacing ordinary plans with chemotherapy and an uncertain future. Those closest to him respond in their own ways: his best friend Kyle, his mother, who is already caring for her husband as he struggles with Alzheimer's disease, his girlfriend Rachael, and a young therapist named Katherine who is early in her career. The film follows Adam as he navigates treatment and tries to make sense of what matters to him. It was written by Will Reiser and is based on his own experience.
Jonathan Levine directed the film, which sits second in his filmography, after All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and before Warm Bodies and later features including Long Shot and Mr. Irrelevant. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, with Seth Rogen as Kyle, Anna Kendrick as Katherine, Bryce Dallas Howard as Rachael and Anjelica Huston as Adam's mother. Rogen produced alongside Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin. Made for roughly 8 million dollars, it took in about 41 million worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from around 353,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 out of 10 from more than 4,000 votes. A critics' rating of 7.7 out of 10 from 194 reviews places critical and audience assessments close together, suggesting broad agreement about the film's mixture of comedy and serious illness.
What's left behind the scenes
- Summit Entertainment insisted on a kiss between the characters played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anna Kendrick at the end of the film. However, both the actors and the filmmakers decided that it would be superfluous, as they believed the film should be about a person with cancer, not a love story.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually shaved his head completely during filming. The scene was entirely improvised by him and Seth Rogen, as it was not written in the script.
- Adam, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is based on screenwriter Will Reiser, who managed to recover from cancer. Seth Rogen (who played Kyle) helped Reiser cope with the illness. It was Rogen who convinced Reiser to write the script for this movie.
- James McAvoy was originally cast as Adam, but he declined to participate in the project. A week before filming was scheduled to begin, Seth Rogen called Joseph Gordon-Levitt to offer him the role, and he agreed two days before filming started.
- Bryce Dallas Howard came up with the movie's title. Initially, the crew was skeptical of the suggestion, but the title eventually caught on. The film was originally intended to be titled 'I Have Cancer'.
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