'I'm with Cancer' casts Anna Kendrick and lands a new director

By Sarah Sluis

If you go to a film entitled I'm with Cancer, you have some idea of what to expect. Cancer = sad. The pun on "I'm with child" = funny. It also implies a kind of child/pet relationship, as if cancer is just this novel thing that pops out of you and starts going goo-goo-ga-ga.

The project also brings to mind a cautionary tale, Funny People. The rather generically titled Judd Apatow movie, which also involved serious illness, didn't live up to expectations this summer. It might have mixed up its tone too much, switching from comedy to drama and back, a strategy that left viewers with an odd, instead of cathartic, emotional experience.

Anna Kendrick just signed on to I'm with Cancer today, joining James McAvoy (the guy with cancer) and Seth Rogen (the guy's friend). Kendrick will play a psychologist who is supposed to help the cancer patient, but is a bit naive about the process. Jonathan Levine will now direct after the original director dropped out due to location difference--an odd-sounding, unusually neutral reason if I ever heard one.

But given the tricky subject of the comedy, how will people react? I found the best response in this script review, which was done by a woman with cancer. She ends up liking the script, though she notes that:

"I'm with Cancer approaches a serious disease with humor and light-heartedness. But to those who know people who have died from cancer, I fear the tone of the story may be off-putting and come across as flippant and disrespectful. It's not, but cancer evokes a lot of emotion in people and personal experiences will most definitely play into one's interpretation of this story."

Point taken. At this point, I'm thinking the tone is a touch more irreverent than Patch Adams, another story about finding humor in the face of death. What this project ultimately has in its favor is its real-life connection. The screenwriter, Will Reiser, based the story on his own experiences, and Rogen is a good friend both in real life and in the movie. While Funny People was purely fictional, Patch Adams (which, if I remember correctly, made me both laugh and cry) was also based on a true story. When you're dealing with a tonally complex story, real-life experiences may be the best way to anchor a film and prevent it from going all over the place.