Considering the reported stat that one out of three people will get cancer sometime in their lives, you'd think there would be a greater push to find a cure. Yes, a great deal of work has gone and continues to go toward achieving that goal, but there just doesn't seem to be a united public outcry and/or massive government undertaking for this hideous malady to be wiped away for good.
Absent that, individuals and families who are currently facing the disease sometimes go to what appear to be extreme measures in order to save themselves or their loved ones, particularly when a child is stricken. That's the gist of "My Sister's Keeper," an unabashed tearjerker based on Jodi Picoult's 2004 novel of the same name.
In it, Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric play parents so desperate to save their daughter (powerfully played by Sofia Vassilieva) from leukemia that they genetically engineered a younger sister for her who'd be a perfect donor match. While that might have a far-out, sci-fi ring to it, this film by writer/director Nick Cassavetes -- working from a screenplay adaptation he co-penned with Jeremy Leven -- is a mix of family and court case drama.
The latter stems from the 11-year-old donor child (smartly embodied by Abigail Breslin) hiring a lawyer (Alec Baldwin in partial sleaze mode) to prevent her parents from forcing her to donate a kidney to her sick sister. That legal move threatens to tear the family apart, and it certainly raises compelling ethical, medical and legal questions regarding the matter at hand.
There are some undeniably powerful and heartbreaking moments throughout the production (those who cry at Lifetime movies better have the tissues in standby mode), but the overall offering unfortunately suffers from some filmmaking maladies that undermine its efforts.
The most glaring and troublesome is the inclusion of far too many songs where the lyrics are designed to drive home the emotional state of any particular moment in the storyline. They're obviously never needed as only the most oblivious viewer won't see or sense the unfolding emotion, but Cassavetes delivers the cinematic supplement with all the subtlety of a bulldozer.
Yes, some of the songs would be lovely on their own (including a slowed down and more somber version of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"), and those Lifetime junkies will probably bawl their eyes out every time one of them starts on the soundtrack. Nevertheless, their inclusion and far too obvious purpose unnecessarily defuse any such given moments.
The director also includes multiple voice-over narration tracks to represent the different family members' points of view regarding what's occurring, but they're similarly unnecessary (regular dialogue and even just facial expressions would fit the bill).
Then there's the non-linear storytelling approach, where the plot moves around in time to divulge what has and currently is occurring. I'm fine with the curvy and back-tracking approach in theory as long as that makes a given film more interesting or compelling. Here, it occasionally allows for some poignant moments -- most notably, a brief romance between the sick girl and another cancer patient played by Thomas Dekker that puts the over-hyped young love in "Twilight" to shame.
Yet, the non-linear approach ultimately doesn't serve the story well, especially as it creates a fairly disjointed aura (no doubt exacerbated by the director seemingly being enamored with the old-fashioned fade-out and fade-in to differentiate scenes and temporal aspects) and never justifies why it's better than a straightforward A to Z approach.
Due to that storytelling tactic and those distracting song interludes and montages, the film never manages to maintain or build upon any sort of growing emotional or dramatic momentum. And that means the eventual courtroom scenes lack the sort of power they deserve, even with the big revelation reveal that turns out not to be that surprising, shocking or devastating considering how the related plot elements have been concocted and then play out (or, more accurately, don't do so in a believable fashion).
All of which is a shame as the performances are generally good and the film sometimes rises to the occasion and delivers fairly effective emotional wallops, the best of which often arrive in quiet and subtle ways. And I like that the stress that pervades the family mostly comes off as realistic, sometimes funny, sometimes ugly, and thus fairly believable, rather than the usual Hollywood style fabricated construct.
It's just too bad that other elements of the filmmaking style get in the way of telling this occasionally engaging emotional tale. And that's especially true since the aforementioned stats mean most everyone can relate to at least some part of what occurs. Like the underperforming funding and/or demand for an expeditious cure, the film suffers a scattershot approach that doesn't bring out the best of its potential. "My Sister's Keeper" rates as a 4.5 out of 10.
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