Metacritic reviews

50/50 is a tremendous movie. It's also a really funny one, which doesn't mean it won't make you cry.

Even hardened cynics will embrace the cliché – yep, you will laugh, you will cry.

Reiser has written his characters with an indelible sweetness and vulnerability, which allows the cast to deliver performances with some depth.

The movie belongs to Gordon-­Levitt and Anna Kendrick as his painfully green therapist.

Buoyant and observant, 50/50 is a small winner; the director, Jonathan Levine ("The Wackness"), has a great touch, mordant but light-handed.

The movie is far more successful in its execution of the young-man-meets-mortality element, warranting its existence by bringing some well-considered verisimilitude to what feels like rare movie territory.

A soft and sweet cancer drama that hits with the force of an ill-timed hug.

Will Reiser's semiautobiographical script initially prescribes too artificial a story treatment for its characters but is rescued by a genial, low-key vibe that builds in sensitivity and emotion up through the final reels.

The story is an autobiographical one from screenwriter Will Reiser's own ordeal; you smile with the thought that he had such women in his life, tough yet supportive, giving him the license to be funny again.

Although it veers maudlin in its final act - 50/50 mostly succeeds as a movie about a young man fighting cancer that doesn't give in to sap or sentiment.