fiddy-fiddy

Great news! I've decided to expand my commentary on life beyond food and housewivery and not having a job and food and the suckage of the academic market and the folly of becoming a historian and ice cream! I am going to now include film reviews! Today's selection, 50/50. First off, you should know that if you have cancer, or have ever had cancer, or know anyone who has cancer, this is probably not the movie for you. It is a SAD movie, despite it being billed as a heartwarming comedrama. I've never written a real movie review before (despite writing about film all the time in my professional life) so I'm going to try very hard to keep my impressions from giving too much away--but I make no promises, so read on at your own spoilage alert. First up, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I love me some JGL. Since Heath Ledger went on that big walkabout in the sky, Joesph Gordon-Levitt has become one of the cutest patooties on the silver screen (and believe me the similarities between them don't hurt). And he can act! This is one of the primary reasons I wanted to see this movie. I thought he was genius in 500 Days of Summer and he didn't disappoint here either. Unfortunately the fact that he remains gorgeous was probably a bad thing in this movie. I totally bought the emotional despair, but physically, he still looked like JGL. His losing weight was a matter of personal/directorial interpretation (we can't all be Natalie Portman) and sure they shaved his head, but I think they should have done his eyebrows too. It bothered me through the whole movie. A stocking cap and some dark under-eye circles seemed unfair given the magnitude of what this movie was trying to convey. Second, Seth Rogan totally nailed his part and gets double kudos for delivering the movie's best line with consummate panache ("here's what I like to call Exhibit WHORE!") The rest of the acting was also good, although the writing fell apart in other places. For example JGL's therapist, a grad student named Katherine (played by Anna Kendrick) was simultaneously spot on and completely unbelievable. Kendrick did a great job of conveying that not-so-rare academic combo of book-smarts and cluelessness. She also captured that look of being young and frail and awkward and earnest and herself just a little crazy that I've seen on many a grad student. But the rest of her character was just nonsense. Who lets a 24 year old grad student see patients by herself? (No one, that's who!) And how does someone who at best had only three years of training get an office in a hospital, not to mention an office that's bigger than my apartment?) And well, there's more that I truly hated, but I don't want to ruin the movie. Speaking of, I hate, hate, HATED the way the movie ended. Not the part where we find out whether JGL lives or dies--that part I was totally fine with. No, I hated the very end, which was some of the dumbest, campiest, most cliched writing I've seen in a long time, which threatened to ruin what was to that point a perfectly reasonable, if dead-depressing movie. I'm a big fan of endings, and I don't mind sacrificing characters for the sake of the narrative. But this was, to use the German, total quatch. I'll leave it at that. I'm going to give it a 7/10, a generous assessment, not because I'd ever want to see 50/50 again, but because I can't stop thinking about it. In fact, Steve and I have been celebrating Halloween by working our way through the Bela Lugosi collection (with heavy help from Boris Karloff), and yet four days later, this remains the movie giving me nightmares. I'm not sure what that says, but it certainly says something.