My Sister's Keeper

I have never watched a movie that worked so hard for the tears. First, a girl has cancer and we watch her bleed, vomit, cry and look pale. Then, cancer girl's little brother is dyslexic, the judge of the case (more on that) just had her daughter killed by a drunk driver and to top it off, the lawyer has an iron lung, needs a dog to keep him away from magnets, oh and he has epilepsy. I have to admit I was surprised the father did not have one leg and the mother an eye patch, light hearing loss and a speech impediment. All of this adds up to a kind of over the top cheesiness, but the movie is so earnest, there are tears.

Anna(Abigial Breslin) is a young girl who was made in a test tube specifically to be spare parts for her sister, Kate(Sofia Vassilieva) who has been sick with cancer for years. Anna is tired of being poked, prodded and abused and she wants to sue her parents for medical emancipation. She goes to see Campbell Alexander(Not Alexander Campbell like a normal named person) who has a 91% success rate and he takes her case. Her parents, Sara and Brian(Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) react in different ways, with Sara screaming, crying and overall being unreasonable and Brian quietly trying to figure out what is going on. The brother, Jesse(Evan Ellingson) does some stuff, but it is never explained where he goes or what he does. I guess he is trying to get his parents to notice, maybe? Who knows because he is kind of tossed aside here. Then through a series of elaborate flashbacks we see the past filled in. We get Kate's heartbreaking and tragic love story(This flashback earns the legitimate tears) and we see how the family has dealt with Kate's cancer through the years.

The opening 15 minutes of the movie really set it up to be super confusing because each character gets time to narrate a portion of the story and I was worried that if the movie kept up that it would be a bit confusing what is going on. Narrating from different perspectives is fairly easy in book form because you can do it chapter by chapter, but in a movie, it can be a bit mixed up and can pull you out of a story. Luckily, it is handled pretty well and it goes away for the most part after that. When the movie gets going, the voice overs become minimal and the focus shifts between the past and present. The film, at times, plays like a series of shorter vignettes that make up a larger story, meaning there is, at times, a severe lack of cohesion in the story. A flashback will happen that does not really make sense in the present tense, but there because it is supposed to be there. This makes for some muddled story telling, which can really put the movie in a bad position because instead of crying, like the movie obviously wants me to do, I was left wondering why this scene was put in that place.

That is not to say there aren't tears, because there are. When Anna meets the judge and they have their conversation, there are legitimate tears, and the aforementioned love story really brings them in. Also, the beach sequence is designed to make the eyes water up, if not make full on tears pour out. I really enjoyed the beach scene because it is perfectly placed in the movie and it is the exact kind of scene one expects to find in such a movie. The non sick kids feeding birds in slow motion, cancer girl is between dad and mom laughing and getting bald head kisses, while the ocean crashes in the background and a sappy song plays. Those scenes were made specifically for movies about girls with cancer and girls suing their parents. Oh and in case you have not cried by the final 15 minutes, you get to endure a whole scene of deathly ill cancer girl and her mother. THEY WILL GET THEIR TEARS OUT OF YOU!!

Abigail Breslin has the toughest duty, in my opinion. She has to play a girl who was never meant to be and exists solely so her parents can keep their real daughter alive. Then she has to live with the parents she is suing and she has to live with the consequences that if she wins her case, her sister will die. It is not an easy task for a young girl, but Breslin is growing into quite a little actress. She is utterly charming, but she has something deeper there. Abigail is taking great roles and this is another solid job by the young girl. Sofia has the worst job, playing a girl who does nothing but cry, scream and bleed, but she will rip your heart out during certain moments. The love story between her and Thomas Dekker is the highlight of the movie for me (although fans of the book are up in arms). Sofia has a bright smile and winning personality that make it even harder to watch when she starts puking. The big mess has been Cameron Diaz. The poor actress has been taken to task for being too much, too over the top. In my opinion, there is no way to over react to having a teenage child dying of cancer. That is just how I feel. When it comes to the death of near death of a loved one, there is no way to really over react. Is Cameron a bit shrill? Yes, she is, but I think the part is kind of written that way. She is not the best actress in the world, but she has totally thrown herself into the role, even if she is a bit too pretty to really look like a mother of 3, not to say mother's of 3 have to be ugly, but she is too glamorous looking.

My Sister's Keeper asks moral questions about life and death. Is it okay to manufacture a child to save another child? Does that manufactured child not have rights? At what age are we able to make tough decisions for ourselves? isn't all life valuable? Then, the movie robs the audience of a tough answer by taking the easy way out. For 100 minutes we are asked to question life and question parental choices and then the movie weasels its way out of forcing a hard answer on us. Perhaps people will be satisfied to walk away without the tough answers, but I was not. Now, the book ends in a completely different way, in a way that changes everything and I am not saying the book ending is the way it should end, but I feel a different ending is needed to make this movie more whole. As it is, it is an okay movie, with a few tear jerker moments, but just as many moments that kind of make your eyes roll. At times it feels like the screen writer and director are trying to get as much from the book in as possible, but doing that leaves far too many dangling questions in the air when the movie is over.

Final Grade: C