“Gordon-Levitt and Rogen are a dream team,” wrote Peter Travers of the film in Rolling Stone, “even when the dream turns into a nightmare.”
Actor Rogen recalls how the making of the film helped him process his own experiences when 50/50 screenwriter – and his real-life best friend, Will Reiser – was diagnosed with cancer.
“As shocking, sad, confusing and generally screwed up as it was,” Rogen recalled, “we couldn’t ignore that because we were so ill-equipped to deal with the situation, funny things kept happening.
“Will got better, and when he did, we thought the best way to pull something good out of the situation was to get him to write a screenplay. Ideally, we wanted to make a film that would be as funny, sad and hopefully as honest as the experience we went through. As soon as the script was completed, it quickly became a passion project for all of us. It helped us come to terms with Will’s struggle as well as our own experiences.”
Director Levine “knows how to stay out of the way long enough to let a very talented cast shine,” wrote Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly, “and Rogen’s fundamental, unexpected decency, which can often only be expressed through shoulder-punching obscenities, grows more quietly moving as the picture wears on."
50/50 will show Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Nugget Theater, at 8:30 p.m. Rated R; 100 minutes; tickets $8. No Nugget passes, please.
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