My Sister's Keeper (2009): Not Sure If It's A "Keeper" Or Not
Written: Jun 30 '09 (Updated Jul 01 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Great directing, a few shining acting moments.
Cons: Some soundtrack distractions and the runtime length.
The Bottom Line: An interesting but slow film that yet shows some fascinating family moments.
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| Ed.Williamson's Full Review: My Sister's Keeper |
"If you were a woman, you'd understand this kind of movie," I can hear a friend of mine saying about 2009's My Sister's Keeper. Perhaps she's right, but while I found this film interesting and the directing was masterful, I was also pretty underwhelmed by it. Maybe it's a man-thing.
I was fortunate to take in this film with my fellow Epinions member and Top Reviewer film critic, Mike Holmes, and it is always fun to compare notes with Mike. As usual, he gave it higher marks than I did, but we both enjoyed many of the aspects of it.
Right off the top, let me say that director Nick Cassavetes, who has given us some fine films such as The Notebook and Alpha Dog, took the project and masterfully put together a complex plot with some very fine acting performances. If one considers all the subplots that had to be utilized and yet the central plot that had to maintain momentum, and how Cassavetes pulled it all together, his work here is a tour de force. However, for me, some other things weighed the project down. I wondered if too many cooks were making the broth, so-to-speak.
The film is the story of a family in Los Angeles who has a young girl (Kate Fitzgerald, played by Sophia Vassilieva) battling cancer, and how they cope with it. Kate's parents, Sara and Brian, played respectively by Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric, have attempted to bring healing to Kate by having what is colloquially referred to as a "test tube baby" (Anna Fitzgerald, played by Abigail Breslin) who has a close-match genetic profile with Kate, so she becomes, effectively, the "donor child" for Kate. Sara and Brian, in a Sophia's-Choice-like situation, allow the doctors to periodically harvest young Anna's body for stem cells, bone marrow, and other things that might help the ailing Kate. This does not put Anna into extreme danger, yet these surgeries take their toll on her, and when Anna is 11, she learns that her parents want her to donate one of her kidneys to Kate. Anna contacts a lawyer (Campbell Alexander, played by Alec Baldwin), and asks him to sue her parents so that she stop being used as a donor for Kate and can keep her kidney, even though she knows she is handing Kate a death sentence. The ongoing illness of Kate, the legal battle between Anna and her parents, and the volatile chemistry of all the family members during this tumultuous time then give the dark and light energy to the story.
One of the most interesting parts of the drama is the picture of what such stresses do to such a family in crisis. An agonizing crisis in a family can bring the members together or it can tear it apart. Often we get a formulaic let's-all-pull-together-troopers portrayal in movies that deal with this, yet here, in My Sister's Keeper, we see a mixture of both harmony and extreme alienation, which is probably much closer to reality in situations of this type.
Along with fine directing from Cassavetes, there is an abundance of fine acting which derives in no small part from that direction. Abigail Breslin as Anna shines, as we would expect. So does Baldwin, who plays his attorney-with-a-secret role in fine balance.
I have mixed feelings about Sophia Vassilieva's performance, however. Probably through no fault of her own, and though she gives us a strong performance many times, I felt that her sunshiny smile-through-all the-agony-of-dealing-with-cancer expression was a little unnerving toward the end of the movie. I would have wished for more variance in her expression, but after a while she looked to me like simply a what-a-brave-child-surely-must-look-like mannequin facing her future with those deer-in-the-headlights eyes and that frozen smile. This probably runs counter to what many viewers will see in her character, but at least Ms. Breslin gave us some variety in her expressions. Maybe they told Ms. Vassilieva to give that changeless cheery smile through all those scenes, or maybe she does that naturally, whatever, it just seemed a bit syrupy sweet to me.
Cameron Diaz as Sara gives us a strong acting portrayal, and she is spot-on in many places, yet, alas, she too seemed a little stuck in one hammer-hammer-hammer mood through the movie for me. Only in a few places does she actually relax and let down her defenses and give us some variation. I know, many will say that that was all in character, but it still could have been a more rounded portrayal, in my opinion. Jason Patric, by comparison, gives a nice, understated performance that seemed to fit right into the story just the way it should be, and he did show us several different sides to his character.
There were two real downers though, for me at least, in this movie. The worst, and I may sound picky here, were the occasional musical selections jarringly dropped like a rock-in-a-pond, into the flow of the action in such a way that it was distracting. The second was the length of the movie. The runtime is 109 minutes but it seemed to me like 109 hours. If I was a lover of tearjerker films I might have not noticed, but it simply seemed to move at a snail's pace especially in the last part.
All in all, I am okay with this movie and would recommend it on the strength of the directing, most of the acting, the portrayal of a real-life family handling a crisis situation, and Abigail Breslin's performance. You gotta love Abigail; she can take any old movie and make it sparkle and shine when she is on the screen. I hope it is that way as long as she continues to be in movies.
Three Stars/ ***
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Girl Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Music
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Epinions.com ID:
Ed.Williamson
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 - Top 200 |
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Member: Ed Williamson
Location: Way Out West, USA
Reviews written: 607
Trusted by: 315 members
About Me:
Fight 'em till Hell freezes over, then fight 'em on the ice!
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