Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the type of guy who only crosses the street when the sign says to ‘go.’ He’s goody two-shoes. He doesn’t drink, smoke or cheat on his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard). So when Adam is diagnosed with a malignant
spinal tumor, he’s stunned that this could happen to him.
And so begins a charming, and humorous look at a terminal illness from that moment the doctor says “you have cancer” followed by babbling physician jargon, to the exhausting task of telling his mother (Anjelica Huston) he could die. Then there’s the realization that his life – like any cancer patient – is about to change over night. And let’s face it….facing your own mortality raises questions and sensitivities you never thought you’d reflect on, especially at age twenty-seven when you’re otherwise fearless.
But thank GOD for Adam’s best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen) who sees the cure as women and sex, and then more sex. (sidenote: The movie was inspired by a real life friend of Rogen’s who also produces). Kyle takes Adam to bars, certain that cancer is a new form of pick-up line. This is about when the film shifts gears and we realize that the illness is not about the person with the cancer but more how those around him handle it.
His mother is over-bearing, his girlfriend barely available, while his therapist, Katherine (Anna Kendrick) uses her inexperience (she’s in medical school) to try to say the right thing. Eventually the wrong things might just work. (We first fell in love with Kendrick when she played a similar character – the naïve, understated colleague to George Clooney in Up In the Air.)
Rogen and Levitt have incredible buddy chemistry that make this unlike your typical man-child film. Near perfect in every sense of the way, the filmmakers pull off the most sensitive of subjects with grace, dignity and the right dose of laughter, all the while without disrespecting anyone in the audience who may have experienced this. And let’s face it, in today’s world, that’s everybody. Four tiaras