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Author Topic: 50/50  (Read 4709 times)

Scottlwl

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2011, 03:00:50 AM »
Really great to read some different opinions on this one. Interesting that some of you didn't take as much from this as I did.

I was an emotional mess by the end of it. From laughing and crying then laughing then crying. I felt completely drained by the end. I saw it in quite a small and busy pre-screening. (probably 30 seater) so maybe this intimate setting brought more of the film alive to me.

I fell in love with Anjelica Houston. Her relationship with her son hit a perfect note with me and the one I have with my Ma.

It is probably going into my top 5  of the year.
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Bondo

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #21 on: November 29, 2011, 02:53:32 PM »
I was an emotional mess by the end of it. From laughing and crying then laughing then crying. I felt completely drained by the end.

Yeah, this film had me wrecked. Not so much laughing but it was definitely dusty, more than any film I've seen this year.

AAAutin

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #22 on: January 04, 2012, 01:12:35 AM »
Have to disagree.  I think she actually did try to be supportive but was overwhelmed  and not prepared to handle the situation.  The whole buying the dog thing for example.  Her heart was in the right place but she was essentially buying a substitute companion.  I never got the impression she was one-note, just not even slightly prepared for having a boyfriend with a potentially terminal illness.

I agree with this 100%. Unlike her character in THE HELP, I did not see Bryce Dallas Howard's character as some sort of irredeemable villain. In fact, quite the opposite: I felt a lot of sympathy for her after the way she was berated and boxed in.

moviephiliac

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #23 on: January 04, 2012, 03:03:34 AM »

I agree with this 100%. Unlike her character in THE HELP, I did not see Bryce Dallas Howard's character as some sort of irredeemable villain. In fact, quite the opposite: I felt a lot of sympathy for her after the way she was berated and boxed in.

I think the problem is really in Howard's performance. Some of the actions and motivations of her character are noble since there aren't really any true "bad" guys amongst the main characters, the writing makes it a point to evoke empathy for everyone involved in the situation on some level. However, Howard plays the character as if motivated by artifice, I never once actually believed she meant the things she said when confronted by Adam and Kyle.

AAAutin

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #24 on: January 04, 2012, 12:28:20 PM »
However, Howard plays the character as if motivated by artifice, I never once actually believed she meant the things she said when confronted by Adam and Kyle.

Ah, interesting. Viewed through that prism, I can recognize the problem. But, for me--and I have often said that I'm not the greatest judge of acting craft--I bought everything she said as being sincere.

Hot Biscuit Slim

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Re: 50/50
« Reply #25 on: February 23, 2012, 11:23:28 PM »
I was an emotional mess by the end of it. From laughing and crying then laughing then crying. I felt completely drained by the end. I saw it in quite a small and busy pre-screening. (probably 30 seater) so maybe this intimate setting brought more of the film alive to me.
Same here. I found a lot of humor in the movie, but the scene right before he goes into surgery hit me on a level I did not see coming. Something about being taken away from your mom and dad to go into a scary place by yourself. There is no level of intellectual detachment that could remove the power of that scene for me. I was also very strangely affected by the sudden death of the Matt Frewer character.

I do think the female characters were a tad on the one-dimensional side: B.D. Howard needed to be the heavy, but they could have made her a little less shrill. They pretty much set her up from the beginning by Kyle to be cold, not fulfilling her so-called womanly duties (his p.o.v., not mine). Anna Kendrick was okay, but when he called her in the middle of the night, she was just sitting on her bed apparently doing nothing, with the lights on. She seemed to live in this world in the service of JGL, not for her own life. Huston was terrific: she started off as seeming kind of one-note, but by the end, the method to her overbearing nature was revealed.

I thought the movie was really well-written, because while it acknowledged the severity of the situation and his difficulty dealing with it, it never put it in a glass case or resorted to bathos. (I thought JGL's scream in the car was fine; it was all his pent-up frustration coming out in one swift motion, since he had been so overwhelmed, but trying to suppress it.) Juno and Knocked Up were fun entertainments, but I wouldn't even put them in the same league as 50/50.
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