Gordon-Levitt and Rogen.

In the pantheon of tastelessness designed to make you laugh at diarrhea, menstruation, masturbation, yeast infections, fellatio and worse, you can now add a stupid horror called 50/50. Artificial, irresponsible, filthy and forgettable, it knocks itself cross-eyed trying to make you roar with laughter at chemotherapy, with the nauseating Seth Rogen milking most of the yuks. But a stoner comedy about cancer? I don’t think so.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has two expressions — sleepy and catatonic — and he wears them ragged as Adam Lerner, a 27-year-old reporter for National Public Radio stationed in Seattle who sinks into an understandable depression when malignant tumors are diagnosed on his spine and he is given only a 50/50 chance of survival. His best friend is a disgusting moron who is determined to cheer up by using his terminal illness to attract girls. Can Seth Rogen play anything else? I think they write disgusting moron parts for him in case Zach Galifianakis or Jack Black are busy playing other disgusting moron roles elsewhere, and he plays them all the same way. Anyway, in one of the few lines that can be repeated in print, he says, “If you were a casino game, you’d have the best odds.” In this movie, even the doctors are stupid. Adam’s oncologist is only 24. “What are you? Doogie Howser?” he asks incredulously. Doctor: “Who?” Adam: “Doogie Howser. The teenage doctor.” Oncologist: “Does he work here?” These are the jokes, folks.

Part of this movie is about the ghastly ordeal cancer patients go through—pain, syringes, vomiting, and coughing up blood, and a cold, impersonal medical establishment that places little value on human life—and part of it is about everyone else—caregivers, family members and friends—all of whom care more about themselves than the patient. (All false generalizations for the sake of laughs, and like everything else in the movie, grossly exaggerated.) When Adam undergoes his first chemo treatment, his duplicitous girlfriend (badly overacted by Bryce Dallas Howard) waits four hours in the car because she can’t stand the interiors of hospitals. His stressed-out mother (and what, you may well ask, is Anjelica Huston doing in this blunder?) acts like a cross between Lady Macbeth and Zasu Pitts. Eventually Adam gives up and falls for his psychiatrist (Anna Kendrick) in a sex game that is pure cardboard.

Director Jonathan Levine, who proved his incompetence with two previous disasters, The Wackness and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (a sex thriller so bad it was never released), based the film on the autobiographical experiences of the film’s writer, Will Reiser. But nothing about it rings true. The gallows humor is unforgiving and the compassion is synthetic. The film reveals nothing new about advances in cancer research, addresses no issues like the drug companies that suppress alternative treatments to profit from human suffering. No, it’s just about one guy trying to get laid.

As a nice fellow coming to grips with his own mortality, Mr. Gordon-Levitt shows some tenderness that was never on view in grim movies like Brick and Inception, but his character is so passive it’s hard to get a grip of your own on any kind of reality. Seth Rogen is too vulgar and creepy to believe as anyone’s friend, but he is convincing as a dedicated believer in the medicinal value of pot smoking. My reaction to everything that happens in 50/50 was “Why don’t they just walk out?” But nobody did, so I did it for them.

rreed@observer.com

50/50

Running Time 99 minutes

Written by Will Reiser

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick

1/4

What is going to happen to Michael Cera's career when he really grows up? This is one of the things I found myself wondering about when my attention started wandering during Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. (Also: How can a movie so clearly directed at an audience with generational ADD drag on so? And when did I get so old?)

This is not to say that Mr. Cera is not good in his role of Scott Pilgrim, occupying almost every scene of the film. In fact, he's excellent: wise enough to convey that he's in on the joke, with perfect deadpan delivery. But what will happen to the man-boy when he's all man and can no longer slouch about in baggy pants and hoodie sweatshirts with perpetually flushed cheeks? 

For those who aren't familiar with the popular comic-book series, written by Bryan Lee O'Malley, on which the film is based, the story line goes a little something like this: Our young, Canadian, non-committal hero, who inexplicably has left a path of broken hearts in his wake, falls head over heels for a mysterious doe-eyed young woman with constantly changing hair color named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). But in order to win her heart, he must defeat her seven evil exes. It's a terrific premise and one that must work brilliantly in serialized form. However, when you're 45 minutes into a two-hour film and you've only met two exes, you can't help but start calculating how quickly the rest will be apportioned. Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) employs tons of clever visual tricks-including comic-book-esque "thonks" and "kapows" and video arcade-y "ka-chings"-but this only serves to distract the audience from engaging with any of the (many) characters' plights. There's an awful lot of exposition to muddle through at the start, and a bit of a mind-set adjustment to all of Mr. Wright's visual whimsy.

But once that's occurred, the bright colors and careful, playful art direction are easy on the eyes; a battle-of-the-bands subplot is surprisingly good, thanks to some compositions from Beck; and the acting and casting are generally terrific (though the supreme talents of Alison Pill seem a bit wasted in a small role). Kieran Culkin particularly shines in the role of a sardonic gay roommate; Anna Kendrick continues to prove that she makes surprising and smart film choices; and the film's energy level gets a giant boost when Jason Schwartzman shows up as the most evil of the evil exes. Which brings us to our next questions. Was Jason Schwartzman Michael Cera before there was a Michael Cera? And is there a difference between Rushmore's '90s antihero Max Fisher and 2010's current emo slacker model, in which case there might yet be hope for Mr. Cera to transition from man-boy to man? N.Y.U. film students, get crackin'!

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
Running time 112 minutes
Written by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright
Directed by Edgar Wright
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Mark Webber, Alison Pill, Jason Schwartzman, Anna Kendrick

2 Eyeballs out of 4

George Clooney’s performances are always variations on the same themes: tongue-in-cheek frat-house humor; a rampant ego that makes love to the camera when no girl is around; and the suave wit and good looks of a personality that is droll and self-assured enough to get him over the hurdles when range is required or intelligent dialogue poses a challenge. But in Up in the Air, a delightful new romantic comedy that never suffers from attention deficit disorder, his acting chops are as sharp as his designer suits. There’s less juvenile canoodling, more solid concentration and a welcome indication that for once he might even be taking himself more seriously than just another Hollywood matinee idol.

Guided with precision by Jason Reitman, the Oscar-nominated director of Juno, from an elegant screenplay by Mr. Reitman and Sheldon Turner, based on the satiric novel about corporate America by Walter Kirn, Mr. Clooney gives the most mature performance of his career, in a role as snugly tailored to his caustic charm as cashmere socks. He’s so ingratiating that he regains some of the dignity he lost in the horrible O Brother, Where Art Thou? and a lot of the savvy he trashed in the moronic The Men Who Stare at Goats. In the smart and topical Up in the Air, he plays a man named Ryan Bingham who takes advantage of America’s unhappiest period—the current economic collapse—by traveling all over the map firing people, downsizing companies, draining corporations of their best talent and destroying people’s hopes and futures. Headquartered in Omaha, Ryan is what polite circles refer to as a “career transition counselor” (and what his victims call a “road warrior”), rewarded with expense accounts, and a regular in Hilton hotel bars, rental car agencies and Admirals Club lounges from coast to coast. He spends 322 days on the road and 43 miserable days at home, in a job that comes with a boarding pass; he’s ready to pounce whenever the automobile, housing, health insurance and banking markets fail. His rules: no sympathy, no personal life, no committed relationships. His goal: to reach the elitist level of travelers who amass 10 million frequent-flyer miles. It’s a life no sane human would envy, but things change with sparks like the midnight sun when his job is challenged by a cost-effective new girl trainee in his company, and he meets his equal in a beautiful fellow frequent flyer named Alex (the extraordinary, versatile and alluring Vera Farmiga), who shakes up his marble coolness when she says: “Just think of me as yourself—only with a vagina.”

(Spoiler alert!) The movie shifts into high gear when Ryan inadvertently falls in love, makes somebody else a top priority and discovers with a poignancy that shatters his veneer that he is not one of hers. In movies, it’s always the woman who gets dumped. This time, it’s the man who makes a compromise and pays an enormous emotional price. The woman is totally focused in a double life that provides the film with its biggest surprise. He’s had a taste of the alternative, and going back to his old venal ways will wear off like a bee sting. It’s a film that gives Mr. Clooney the chance to work his special brand of cynicism, and effortlessly play what he does best—the aggressive, sarcastic, self-centered center of everyone else’s emotions, a real man who eats quiche. But he also shows some rare vulnerability for a change, and you like him for it. The movie works as both a short-wired romance between two sophisticated people torn between love and their careers, and as a sober indictment of the kind of people responsible for corporate layoffs and America’s shrinking economy. Jason Reitman is a terrific director who gets better with each film, and he gets a mammoth performance out of George Clooney that will most likely please critics and crowds alike. In Up in the Air, his feet never touch the ground. Another performance this solid, and I might become a fan myself.

rreed@observer.com