The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I have been in remission for almost two years yet I have other health issues that overlap my recovery and is forming a new sense of life and help me reflect how cancer has changed it. Chasing Life is simply attempting to help us understand that you can't understand fully what it's like to have cancer, and those who have cancer are able to relate in ways no show has demonstrated in an entertainment narrative.There are many simple non verbal queues this shows uses to tell its story, but unfortunately it pays more attention to "keeping secrets" to keep the anticipation going. The subplot of the father's secrets was brilliant, and helped the character understand the missing pieces in her life, but also why cancer was in her life.How we live our lives is sometimes misunderstood. Cancer helps you face your fears of the choices you've made and how you use of time. Time being your most valuable commodity, the show attempts to use a terminal character to make that impact.It's unfortunate, that with my personality, it's hard for me to understand things such as these until I have to face them myself in these dark cavernous chapters in my life. This show hit home in ways like no other show in any context. You feel foolish when you have cancer. You feel like your life has been lived in folly, because you miss the whole point. April Carver was heading down that road as success and achievement was more important than living and caring. That was her lesson and its ours as well.Italia played the "That Girl" archetype well. She used no acting devices to convey the character's misses and home runs. A lot of montage and music accompanied this which often became annoying but may have been necessary for emotional moments.For those who haven't had cancer, you need it to understand. It changes how you think and think of this show. I found this show assisting me in my anguish about my life's choices and even though the show ended after two seasons, and the ending was tethered, the character grew from the experience, and that is the purpose of cancer.You learn compassion, sensitivity, pain, discomfort, foolishness, humility, you feel death coming closer. Most importantly its to help us understand to treat others better.This was an ambitious project. The tone was all well in good. The side stories were unnecessary and better choices could have been made rather than socio-political ones. I loved the second family and father betrayal of trust. Life is complicated and those around us also make choices and sometimes they affect us. Life is tragic, no doubt.Life is what we live, chasing it is a concept we form in our minds. Cancer helps us understand what "chasing" really means. This show's concept could continue with other characters, and even pushed her to survive and change her life in a direction nobody would think possible. We want to believe and feel that life continues. Chasing Life can seem fleeting as a thought, because it is. We can't stop time so chasing it seems foolish. That is the tinge in the meaning of the title if you get it.The tone was this show's greatest strength and denying the idea of cancer from an entertainment platform could have been easy. People don't like the topic and with good reason but the show managed to keep it entertaining. Yes, secrets were used as a device and other devices could have made the show more thought out, but its strength was in the realization from how other characters changed her life.I still felt she was a foolish woman. Her biggest flaw was the over caring of The Self. It was displayed in how she married a terminal man even knowing that the operation could eventually kill him when she wanted a future. She turned away a perfectly good relationship because "he couldn't understand" like Leo could. That was the biggest mistake she made in rooting for her change. She never realized her miss in life because she remained concerned about The Self even till the last scene, where she noted she had done everything. That was a miss, but it was the end and that was okay.For my cancer is about confession. It's a part of your life where you stop your routine thought process and realize what you've been doing wrong and acknowledge it. April needed to acknowledge her lifeless ambitions were fraught in futility, and she needed to spend more time thinking of others. That action and decision would have arc'd the character more and helped all of us feel and understand that putting others first is our mission in life and we chase life each day to understand and feel that.Hope this helps.

I started watching the first episode with lots of hope for an inspirational modern take on living with cancer. The overview looked promising and I usually love shows that take on difficult subjects with a positive yet realistic spin. Everything started well. The initial setup wasn't bad and the lead actress was engaging. That's about where it stops. No more than 10 minutes into the show, the lead is berated (only as a joke of course) for being a feminist (her co-worker jokes that she should just ask the guy out that she's swooning over at the office because "you're one of those annoying girls that does that right?" Her response, "What, you mean a feminist?")This theme continues throughout the rest of the episode. For example, after the lead and the love interest have a great date one night, the love interest overhears only part of a conversation (after he chooses to eavesdrop in a stairwell, so that screams healthy mentality already) the next day between the lead and her uncle. He immediately jumps to conclusions, gets unjustifiably angry at the lead and starts blowing her off with no explanation or conversation as to why. Rather than her taking this as a sign that he's unstable and a poor communicator, she sweats over his denial of her. She confronts him and as soon as he understands the full context of the conversation (which wasn't his right to know in the first place), the script is written so it seems to play out as HE is forgiving her, as if she was in the wrong. And she immediately swoons again and starts kissing him. It continues in Ep 2 when the love interest says, "You're stable. You're solid." she responds with, "Please none of these are sexy adjectives." Really? Because now we need to perpetuate that stable, self-sufficient woman aren't sexy?Ep 2 also sees the introduction of the lead's new boss - and attractive female senior corespondent. Before you get all excited about a strong female character, they wait no more than 5 minutes before they objectify her: the lead's co-worker makes an inappropriate sexual innuendo while the camera angle cuts to a shot of the woman walking away, clearly focusing on the tight pencil skirt she's wearing. She speaks 5 languages, but it's the way she looks that really makes her desirable. This degrading of a strong female character continues later in the episode as they proceed to portray her as a "bitch" boss when she takes an interview op from the lead - effectively creating a stereotypical "catty women relationship" between the lead and her boss. These are just a few examples of what is continually strewn throughout this show. It's really disappointing that a show that had so much potential with casting a woman lead, a heavily female cast, and setting up a storyline that should inspire hope, would turn out to be such a letdown on so many levels. If you're looking for an example of what misogynistic tones (both blatant and underlying) look like in Hollywood, then this is your show! If not, switch over to Jessica Jones or House of Cards or even throw on an old classic, Friends, where at least you can laugh at their pre-FB existence with a fun sense of irony.

I want to mention that I have only watched 10 episodes so far and the review is based on that. Chasing Life, as the Titel states, is centered around the concept of "how precious life is" more so than than "how irreversible death is". As far as I'm concerned the concept of this series generally works. Italia Ricci does a great job and makes the show work. The "side stories" and secondary characters have, for me, been a little underwhelming. Not because they where badly cast or don't know how to act, but in my opinion because they are not really flushed out in a way to make them appealing or likable, which i attribute to the writing.The correlation between the movie and this TV series for me is hard to overlook. But a movie captures your attention for roughly 2 hours. This show needs you to make the decision to tune in every week to see how the story progresses. And here is my issue. there are generally only 2 ways that this can play out with the main story arc. Italia Ricci is either going to die or she is going to miraculously recover. To me neither are really appealing. Don't get me wrong, we are going to yo-yo all over the place but in the more general sense, if she dies you get to witness a lot of pain and tears. If she lives, the series which is centered around an illness would lose the main ingredient. Be that as it may, she will get worse and by tuning in you get to watch her get generally worse every week, you get to watch a character you like die. I'm not quite sure what to do next week, not because the show isn't good, but because "how irreversible death is" and we are in a downward spiral with no ground in sight...

I'll be honest, when I first saw the promos for the show I couldn't help but think "How insensitive" or that it looked vaguely cheesy. I happened to catch the first episode late one night and I was so surprised. It was so good. What I like most about the show is how well it incorporates side characters and subplots. The situations that happen outside of April's(the main character)scope are actually intriguing and sometimes emotional. I actually care about what is going on around her and don't find the subplots tedious or boring. Also,the show does a great job at including cliff hangers while also going back to tie up some loose ends in a way that doesn't make anything feel random or left out. It gets me excited to see what will happen next but without feeling annoyed that nothing gets resolved. Overall the plot is very multifaceted, the characters are interesting, and I find myself looking forward to the next episode. I really enjoy it and hope it doesn't get canceled!