Cameron Diaz & Abigail Breslin
My Sister's Keeper

     RSS

 

Old joke: Boy goes to pick up his prom date. Girl's father asks him: Are your intentions toward my daughter honorable or dishonorable? Boy says, "Great! I didn't know I had a choice!"

Movies are like that, too: They can choose to work us over honorably, or dishonorably.

This brings us to a well-acted phony such as "My Sister's Keeper." I'm sure its emotional intentions were honorable. But the harder this assault weapon went at my tear ducts, the more duct tape I wrapped around them as a defensive measure.

Director and co-writer Nick Cassavetes changes a good deal of the particulars of Jodi Picoult's 2004 novel, especially near the end, but the basics remain the same, right down to the voice-over chores shared by all the major characters. (This film's practically its own book-on-tape edition.)

Cancer never looked more noble, nor so morally improving.

The daughter of an ex-lawyer (Cameron Diaz) and a firefighter (Jason Patric), Anna (Abigail Breslin, serenely on top of every situation) was a test-tube baby conceived to provide bone marrow and umbilical blood to her older sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who has acute promyelocytic leukemia.

The years have been hard, emotionally and medically, on both girls.

Anna hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for "medical emancipation," and while you'd think a little thing like inter-family legal action would put a stop to all the gorgeous, lovey-dovey montages of everybody cherishing every minute together, well, think again.

Everything is a little too fabulously fabulous in "My Sister's Keeper."

When the backyard bubble-blowing montage comes, it comes with enough bubbles for 10 seasons of "The Lawrence Welk Show."

When Kate assembles a scrapbook of all the things she holds dear, it's such a professional-grade, ostentatiously amazing scrapbook, it actually makes her less sympathetic. And this is a cancer patient we're talking about.

 

Precious little about "My Sister's Keeper" feels like life on planet Earth, even life being lived in an extreme dramatic situation.

Cassavetes directed "The Notebook," which accommodated his gauzy Hallmark romanticism better. (He also made the tougher, underrated "Alpha Dog.") But the mood swings are insane here, and the look is bogus: Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel makes sure that even the hospital waiting rooms are mouthwatering.

As written by Cassavetes and co-screenwriter Jeremy Leven, the mother is a monomaniacal Mother Bear, willing to do anything to save her cub.

Diaz struggles to humanize her.

Others transcend the suds: Vassilieva is often quite moving. So is Joan Cusack, as the judge presiding over the court case. (The character was male in the novel.) Baldwin's masterly underplaying is most welcome. You may cry at the film's designated crying times, approximately every 10 minutes, like the traffic and weather. Or you may not, and wonder instead why some high-gloss weepies treat their source material quite so shamelessly.

 

 

"My Sister's Keeper" Movie Trailer

 

Receive Movie Reviews
Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

 

 

My Sister's Keeper MPAA rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language, and brief teen smoking).

Running time: 1:48.

Starring: Cameron Diaz (Sara); Abigail Breslin (Anna); Alec Baldwin (Campbell); Jason Patric (Brian); Sofia Vassilieva (Kate); Evan Ellingson (Jesse); Joan Cusack (Judge De Salvo).

Directed by Nick Cassavetes; written by Jeremy Leven and Cassavetes, based on the novel by Jodi Picoult;

Produced by Mark Johnson, Chuck Pacheco and Scott L. Goldman.

A New Line Cinema release.

 

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

Michelle Pfeiffer & Rupert Friend

Cheri
Michelle Pfeiffer & Rupert Friend in Cheri

Michelle Pfeiffer appears in her first substantial dramatic role since "White Oleander," and we are reminded of how much the world of film has lost by her recent absence.

Pfeiffer plays an aging prostitute nudged into a relationship with the 19-year-old wastrel son of a fellow courtesan (Kathy Bates).

 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Shia LaBeouf & Megan Fox in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The first "Transformers" was a headache, but I sort of enjoyed it. It was a Slurpee brain-freeze of a blockbuster. This sequel is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2.5 hours. Nobody's looking for anything other than relentless, brainless action, but director Michael Bay offers nothing but visual and aural chaos.

Whatever Works
Larry David & Evan Rachel Wood in Whatever Works

On the heels of last year's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," the freshest Woody Allen film in more than a decade, "Whatever Works" (Allen's 40th feature as director) plays like a hoary old Broadway stage comedy yanked, reluctantly, into the present. Larry David ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") plays a New York City misanthrope whose worldview is tempered by a relationship with a much younger Southern runaway (Evan Rachel Wood)

Jack Black & Michael Cera

Year One
Jack Black & Michael Cera in Year One

Hit and miss doesn't begin to describe this frequently wince-worthy comedy. Jack Black and Michael Cera play outcast members of a Paleolithic tribal village whose wanderings bring them into contact with Cain and Abel and Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah. Harold Ramis directs, and while this won't join his list of essential comedies, some of the dumb jokes manage to elicit a laugh.

 

Food Inc. (3 Stars)
Eric Schlosser & Michael Pollan in Food Inc.

This eye-popping documentary from filmmaker Robert Kenner should win a few hearts and minds regarding what we put in our stomachs. But the film got virtually no cooperation from representatives of the dominant players in industrial food production, and as a result, "Food, Inc." is a rangy, well-articulated essay rather than a compelling point-counterpoint.

The Proposal (2 Stars)
Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal

In this disposable romantic comedy, Ryan Reynolds plays the beleaguered Man Friday to a fearsomely mean book editor played by Sandra Bullock. The editor, a Canadian living in New York, has visa troubles and is threatened with deportation. She strong-arms the assistant into marrying her -- quickie divorce to follow -- under the suspicious eye of Immigration Services.

Moon (2 Stars)
Sam Rockwell, a solitary astronaut, and
only a computer voiced by Kevin Spacey in Moon

This film could alternatively be titled 2009: A Space Odyssey, as it is virtually impossible not to be reminded of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece between Kevin Spacey's soothing ministrations as a computer named Gerty and Sam Rockwell's efforts to cope as the lone occupant of a lunar outpost. Rockwell plays Sam, a technician working on a strip-mining operation on the moon.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Denzel Washington & John Travolta in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Denzel Washington's easygoing authority compensates for a lot in a sequel that fails to live up to the 1974 original, which starred Walter Matthau as a New York City transit cop locking horns with subway hijackers.

Director Tony Scott's modern version is slick, predictable and, thanks mainly to Washington's canny underplaying, fairly diverting. John Travolta plays the lead baddie.