Sensitive, emotional and realistic film requires a hanky
07/01/09
My Sister’s Keeper
New Line Cinema
Rating: 14A
109 minutes
A film like My Sister’s Keeper, based on a very popular novel, depends a lot on how it is adapted and the cast.
By and large, it works, although at times it seems more like a series of vignettes than a complete movie.
This is about a family with their oldest teenage daughter dying of cancer.
Her younger sister, played by the excellent Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), aged 11, hires a sympathetic lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for “medical emancipation.”
All her short life she has helped her sister with bone marrow transplants, etc, because she is a perfect match, but now says she doesn’t want to donate a kidney to save her sister’s life. Needless to say, this causes internal family strife, and a rather prolonged court case.
Cameron Diaz, who has the difficult role of the mother determined to save her oldest daughter’s life at all costs, is not quite believable, especially when she is the prosecuting attorney against her daughter. But the rest of the cast is superb, especially Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva (the daughter dying of cancer). Jason Patric is excellent as the father.
While at times you feel very manipulated by this film, it does a superb job of showing what a family is going through when someone dies this way.
Often, it is hard to watch, and is very sensitive, emotional and realistic.
At other times it is just too melodramatic. Bring a hankie.
Rating: four deer out of five
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Alf Cryderman is a Red Deer freelance writer and old movie buff.
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