“My Sister’s Keeper”

PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some under-age misbehavior, occasional strong language and some upsetting hospital scenes.

 

Surely you have read or heard that “My Sister’s Keeper,” based on a novel by Jodi Picoult, is about a teenager with leukemia. So, right off, you know this is going to be a melodrama designed to elicit tears. It is just about the only thing that we still share with the Victorians: a fetish for a good cry about a young innocent being sent to heaven by the great mystery of life and death. Why do bad things happen to good people?

The film does not attempt to answer that question but rather poses one created by modern medical science. The mother, Sara (Cameron Diaz), and the father Brian (Jason Patric), have the idyllic life. She is a successful lawyer and he is a fireman. They have two sweet and happy children; a boy named Jesse (Evan Ellingson) and a girl named Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), in that birth order. All is giggles and light and then Abigail shows symptoms of cancer. Her death is certain because no match is found for those procedures that can help leukemia patients. The doctors predict Kate will never live to see her 6th birthday. He hints that one option would be to “genetically engineer” a sibling: one that is a perfect match. Thus, they create a third child named Anna (Abigail Breslin). For 10 years Anna is poked by needles for blood cells and bone marrow and the like — all to keep Kate alive. The day comes, however, for Anna to give up her kidney. Then the 11-year-old balks.

When that day comes, Anna hires a slick attorney, named Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin), who advertises on TV. She wants to be medically emancipated. She has had enough of the procedures; she wants to be rid of the burden of being — her sister’s keeper.

The lawsuit is ferociously opposed by their mother, and the family goes to court; one presided over by a judge (Joan Cusack) who has just lost her daughter when a drunk driver kills her.

Melodramatic enough? How about the son? He is being ignored and suffers from dyslexia and wanders off for days hanging around sleazy sections of the city — and nobody notices. And there is something wrong with the lawyer. He has a service dog for a reason that is not clear until a very dramatic moment in the story. Then, WHAM, we get the answer.

What is good about this movie is the acting. Kid actors are unpredictable. But director Nick Cassavetes knows how to turn lightweight TV child actors into big screen contenders. Sofia Vassilieva is a bit annoying in her role as teenage daughter in TV’s “The Medium,” and I hope for Evan Ellingson’s character (son of the red-headed Lieutenant Horatio “H” Caine) to be bumped off (along with his popinjay father). However, in this film, Ellingson and Vassilieva prove that whatever they lack with their TV roles, they display with roaring talent on film — despite the rather

manipulative storyline. I must reserve my highest praise for Baldwin and Cusack. They really outshine Diaz and Patric, but they have much juicier, three-dimensional roles.

What is not good is the hard-to-believe relationship of the family during the lawsuit. Mom and Dad seem stressed — and we are told that their relationship suffers from opposing views on the lawsuit — but something just does not add up. I am told the film takes great liberties with the book, but my in-house fiction consultant has not finished the book yet and can’t enlighten me. The end of the film’s version of the story has a mild plot twist and explains away some of this “hard-to-believedness” but not enough to satisfy my suspiciousness. There are some pretty big gaping holes in the plot. It seems that some stuff gets left out. Maybe the warm fuzzy shots could have been cut in favor of something of substance for those us who are sentimentally-challenged. But for you romance addicts: rest assured that there is a little tear-jerky subplot that would allow the DVD to be filed along side “Love Story.”

Bottom Line? The actors are good at their craft, but this is a cinematic piece for “sobsaga” fans; people who hardwire their TV remote to the Lifetime Channel. “My Sister’s Keeper” is for folks who like their sugar salted with tears and accompanied by a soundtrack that would make headbangers gag.

“My Sister’s Keeper” gets three bow ties out of five.