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In cinemas now (M)
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Runtime: 109mins
Based on Jodi Picoult’s
best-selling book of the same name, My Sister’s Keeper is the follow-up
emotional drama for director Nick Cassavetes, also famous for The Notebook. Can
you hear the violins?
You know you’re in movie land
when the people are all ridiculously attractive and the sad moments are shot in
a soft golden light. You can also guess how contrived a film will be, when in
the first five minutes, the handsome, all-American family are jumping on the
trampoline out back and blowing bubbles in a twee, musical montage.
Sara (Cameron Diaz), Brian
(Jason Patric), Jesse (Evan Elligton), Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), and Anna
Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) are the perfect family with 2.3 kids – except that
Kate has leukaemia and Mum and Dad made a designer baby of Anna. Genetically
engineered, Anna is a perfect match for Kate, thus saving Kate’s life via a
series of painful donations of bone marrow and blood. Charming. Anna, now eleven,
and fed up with being “spare parts”, hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) and seeks
medical emancipation from her parents.
While the subject matter is
genuinely sad – Kate will die if Anna does not agree to undertake any more
operations – it is never quietly sad. The actors put on fine performances with
the material they’re given, and Cameron Diaz has finally found a role that
doesn’t require her to be a psychotic control freak: not in regards to men,
anyhow. The standout here is Abigail Breslin (of Little Miss Sunshine fame),
who shows enough class not to overdo her part, and is very convincing as the
kid who never gets any of the spotlight, but would do almost anything for her
sister.
Unfortunately, the script by
Jeremy Leven (who also scripted The Notebook) and Nick Cassavetes is too
heavy-handed and consistently morose. One of the only devices used to break up
the wah-wah is a large dose of the above-mentioned musical montages, using a
variety of done-to-death (no pun intended) love songs. Now my Amazon.com page
will actually say I looked at that atrocity of saccharine soundtrack
drivel.
My Sister’s Keeper is an
overwrought tearjerker handled with little finesse and caters to a niche
market: those who have a desperately sick family member and can relate on more
than a superficial level, and those who just plain like to get the sads.
Gentleman, buy the not-too-discerning girlfriend a ticket and then accidentally
‘forget’ something in the car.
**
KATIA NIZIC
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