50/50 – 2.5 Stars

Joseph Gordon Levitt gets a grim cancer diagnosis and is supported by Seth Rogen, who plays the standard best friend role (much as he did in Funny People), only now, he’s a stoner trying to get his friend to use the cancer to get women.  Rogen can be funny but he better branch out.  He’s got one persona and it is wearing very thin.

There is also a love connection with his cancer support therapist Anna Kendrick that is all too paint-by-numbers with its concerns about the ethics of falling in love with a patient and the inevitable breakthrough.  And there is an overbearing mom played with little imagination by Angelica Huston.

What is memorable about the picture is Gordon Levitt, who manages to convey the loneliness, confusion and other-worldliness of a possible premature death sentence with force and subtlety.  He’s almost worth the watch alone.