Comedians argue that no subject is out of bounds and nothing too delicate or serious for comedy.  It seems that first-time feature writer (and Executive Producer) Will Reiser is testing out that argument with his script about Adam Lerner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a 27-year-old man who learns he has a 50/50 chance of surviving cancer. The result, ‘50/50’ shows that while any subject might be fair game, it still has to be funny to prove the point. Directed by Jonathan Levine, who wrote and directed the delightful coming-of-age comedy, the Wackness’, ‘50/50’, is a strained hybrid. It wants to pull the heart strings while making us laugh, but ends up doing neither very effectively.

Adam Lerner (Gordon-Levitt) has a beautiful girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), a loving mother (Anjelica Huston) he can ignore conscience-free, a good job at a radio station and a best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), who chauffeurs the non-driver around.  When Adam learns he has a 50/50 chance of surviving cancer, things start to look differently.  He can’t work due to vomiting and chemotherapy; Rachael has been cheating on him; his mother is becoming overprotective; his father, who has Alzheimer’s, doesn’t know his son is ill, and Kyle sees cancer as a means of pulling compassionate single women.

Then Adam tries therapy as a way of dealing with his affliction. What Katherine, his 24-year-old therapist (Anna Kendrick), lacks in experience and good judgement is allegedly compensated for by her natural, caring and nurturing attitude.  In short, therapist falls in love with patient and patient for  therapist.  Suddenly Adam recognises that Rachael never loved him anyway and Kyle turns from a jerk, into a responsible, sensitive jerk.  Thanks to Katherine, he also reconciles with his mother realising she was lonely; caught between a husband with Alzheimer’s and a son with cancer.  Thank goodness for this, too, as Anjelica Huston lights up the screen in her few allotted minutes, proving once again that that there’s no such thing as a small part….

Part of the problem with 50/50 is that Adam was a bore before he had cancer and hardly improves, while Seth Rogen’s crude, immature Kyle is, well, Seth Rogen all over again.  Anna Kendrick, so wonderful in the film ‘Up in the Air’ opposite George Clooney, is such an improbable therapist it distracts from the romance. Even in a comedy, it’s impossible to believe in a therapist who is  messily eating lunch when a new client arrives, or who expresses her sympathy with physical contact with her patient.  Nothing funny comes out of the fact that Adam has cancer, and there is a distasteful and overlong scene in which Kyle invites two girls over to Adam’s after a night on the town.