My Sister's Keeper Reviews

Since I have a weak spot for Nick Cassavetes' work and since it was the last movie he directed that I haven't seen yet, I was really eager to check this one out. I was also intrigued also by the fact that this flick seemed to create some polarizing responses. I mean, half of the viewers think it is a great tearjerker and the other half seems to think it is just an awfull tearjerker. Personally, I thought it was pretty good but not really great though. The main issue for me was that, in my opinion, the whole thing was too elaborate. Take the scrapbook for example. It looked awesome but it was pretty obvious that it was made by a professional designer and not by some teenager dying of leucemia. Furthermore, there were way too many characters (the sick girl, the little sister, the big brother, the father, the mother, the aunt, the sick girl's boyfriend, the judge, the lawyer, the lawyer's dog,...) and almost all of them had their own sub-plot and, even though most of them were interesting, they were all barely developed and rather half-baked. Still, I liked this flick. I mean, the premise (a young girl refuses to donate her organs to her dying sister) was really fascinating and definitely heartbreaking. It is too bad the whole thing fell apart at the end (indeed, during the courtroom scene, she confesses that her dying sister told her to do so but, this way, it  terribly weakened this character who basically didn't have the right to have her own desire, feelings and thoughts but she was only allowed to follow what her mother or her sister told her to do). I still really enjoyed all the characters and the cast gave some very good performances, especially Cameron Diaz. I have seen some viewers complaining about Diaz and I know she can be pretty annoying but I think it was really not justified in this case. Indeed, in my opinion, she gave here a terrific performance, probably the best of her career. It was a difficult role because she had to be, at the same time, a loving mother but also a saint and also a ruthless dictator who wouldn't listen to anybody. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, it remains a decent drama and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

As much as I don't like Cameron Diaz, this movie shined because of the story and the telling of it. It did a wonderful job of showing only the back story that mattered and in a way that made it yours to capture and think about. While it affected me in a powerful way (as I have lost close loved ones recently), it made me think about the moralities of making decisions based on emotional bias. I had to mark this a 10!

It's one of the films in the genre of drama that totally awes me...Not because of the way it was told and delivered but rather because of the struggles within individual characters.To me, its characters carefully defined the accentuation of other characters. That was the best part I love about the movie...The mind science behind tensions, guilt, flaws, and even supremacy. It's a battle for survival in which you need to feel inferior to claim as being superior and be superior in order to realize that you are more way inferior than the other. What a brilliant play of mind science!Kudos!

The amount of treacle in My Sister's Keeper is staggering, and the fact that the treacle becomes almost unbearable in the last few scenes ruins what could've at least been a somewhat okay dramatic piece. Sure, Nick Cassavetes' prior films (at least the ones I've seen) are pretty sentimental, but none of them sank as low as My Sister's Keeper to elicit tears. Yes, The Notebook was manipulative, but the charisma of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling made it hard to avoid getting engrossed in the film, flawed a romance as it may be. Cassavetes' last film, Alpha Dog, had a severely heart-breaking climax that worked perfectly with the raw and gritty scenes that came prior to it, and I felt that that film was wildly underrated (it was #6 on my top 10 list for 2007). Unfortunately, his follow-up to Alpha Dog goes way over the top in its sentimentality, and the worst part about this is that, normally, when movies like these are too mawkish, it's due to mediocre performances, but this is actually a case in which the actors fare pretty well, and instead, it's the script and the pacing that tarnish everything.

At first, the narrative seems like it's heading in a perfect direction. The first scenes of My Sister's Keeper introduce us individually to each of the five members of the Fitzgerald family, which is composed of parents Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), and their three children, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) and Anna (Abigail Breslin). The film goes one by one with each of these five characters, as we hear voiceovers of how each of them is coping with the fact that Kate is suffering from lymphoma. This initially promising approach falls to pieces when we start getting poorly-edited flashbacks (which is so often the result of indolence in the process of making a cinematic adaptation of a complex novel). The worst of the flashbacks comes when we're exposed to the storyline of Kate starting to date another cancer patient, Taylor (Thomas Dekker). This segment goes on for WAY too long, thus heavily detracting from what is happening in the film's present, and when we return to it, the transition is jarring. The movie also employs fade-outs for apparently no reason at certain moments, as if they were somehow supposed to help clue us into the fact that the movie is moving into "darker" territory.

One of the worst mistakes made by My Sister's Keeper is in its development of eldest son Jesse. Since the main issues of the storyline center around sisters Anna and Kate, the film makes a half-assed attempt to make it seem as though Jesse is a significant piece of the puzzle by giving us a couple of scenes in which he's out on the streets in an apparently troubled state of mind, yet the film doesn't go to any lengths to actually expose his demons. The only truly effective scene involving him in the film is the one in which he returns home late expecting to be chastised, and is then surprised by what actually happens when he arrives. His role in the obligatory big 'revelation' at the end is contrived, let alone the fact that the film tries to convince us that someone would actually be allowed to interject during a court room interrogation. By the way, that's only one of the three or four fallacies that this movie contains about what's allowed in a court room and what isn't.

Throughout the film, we're forced to listen to a soundtrack that contains what seem to be perfectly-selected songs with the purpose of tugging at the heartstrings. It's okay for a while, but during the film's climax it starts to become severely annoying. Then again, that's pretty much true of everything involving the film's final act. You know a movie like this is in trouble when the "final goodbye" scene between the mother and the dying daughter, rather than serving as the film's emotional apex, instead makes you excited about the fact that the movie's almost over.

I do want to give credit to Cameron Diaz for finally doing something different. Over the last few years, she's made it a habit of playing the stereotypical, fun-loving, crazy blonde in all the comedies she's been in, so by starring in something like this, she gets to display range that we haven't seen from her since Being John Malkovich; while her performance isn't Oscar-worthy, it's certainly refreshing to see that she isn't really a one-note performer. However, the biggest standouts are Abigail Breslin and Joan Cusack. Despite being so young, Breslin already has an Oscar nomination under her belt, and while I was disappointed with her somewhat cartoonish turn last year in Definitely, Maybe, she's in top form here, particularly in the very intense emotional moments (it just sucks that she has such terrible lines to deal with). Cusack is magnificent in the role of Judge De Salvo, particularly because her performance actually makes us overlook the movie's horribly obvious contrivance of the judge having lost a child; Cusack balances the deep pain her character is experiencing with a desire to be as objective as possible in the decisions she makes. Unfortunately, the two male characters of the family are hardly developed, which makes it difficult for either Jason Patric or Evan Ellingson to display the talent that would've been put to much better use in a better film.

I've said it a few times in other reviews, and I'll say it again: the fact that a film's plot centers around something important or sad or heart-breaking (or all three of those things) doesn't automatically make the film good. I could sit down right now and decide that I want to write a script for a movie about families who are dying of starvation in a Third World country, but if the way I construct the dramatic elements of the story is half-assed and not compelling, then it's not gonna be very good, and I certainly shouldn't be given credit simply for DECIDING to write about a devastating subject, because anyone can do that. While Cassavetes gave us what many consider to be a ravishing romance with The Notebook, and what I consider to be an extremely well-crafted cautionary tale with Alpha Dog, there's no avoiding the fact that his latest effort is little more than a syrupy exercise in extreme emotional manipulation.

''Most babies are accidents. Not me. I was engineered. Born to save my sister's life.''

Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive.

Abigail Breslin: Andromeda 'Anna' Fitzgerald

My Sister's Keeper is a detailed look at life, cancer and accepting death. Reminded me of The Fountain, but obviously this is a very true to life portrait and mirage of character and family.
We are treated to a very slow, graceful interpretation of what it is to be powerless against what will be and what is. My Sister's Keeper effortlessly does not hold back from getting it's hands dirty emotionally or playing on it's audiences hopes and fears.
We are given each character, accompanied with a title on screen and narration to help us link and study there train of thought, their mindset and focus on the goings on that entwine them.

''Do I look pretty daddy?''

I never thought I would say this but Cameron Diaz is a big surprise for me here. Cameron Diaz as the mother, Sara Fitzgerald is one of the finest roles I have seen her play. This isn't a poorly constructed comedy piece, which usually Diaz is known to grace with her presence, this isn't an animated series of diluted meaning, but a character who really comes to life, with an unprecedented anger rivaled bar none. Diaz shows us a mother unwilling to give up for her child, making choices even at the expense at her other daughter, but these choices are all valid in giving us an understanding of why and how.
Abigail Breslin shines like she did in Little Miss Sunshine and it's obvious this girl is going to grow into an adult version of talented stardom. She is absolutely compelling anytime she graces the screen, especially her interaction with Alec Baldwin who also excels with his Lawyer Campbell Alexander role.
Sofia Vassilieva as Kate Fitzgerald, is really the sinking of the titanic, she is so believable, and so tear inducingly ill-like in her performance you can't help but share anguish that her and her family feel as events transpire. This is a selfless character brought to life in an array of tragedy and remorse, of energized spirit and a hope that precedes any obstacle.

I could safely say My Sister's Keeper would be a hard film for anyone to watch again due to it's upsetting nature. At times I felt I could not watch due to the slow pacing, for example a picture album is repeatedly shown which really for me slowed the story down. Another thing that annoyed me was the amount of time spent showing Kate and her boyfriend Taylor, but this was only a few circumstances, the romance was a vital part of a bigger story, the content another version entirely.
Overall My Sister's Keeper is a moving tale of life, controversial issues such as test tube baby donors, and the moral implications of choice and free will. The frailties of our bodies and the time we have alloted can never be fully known, My Sister's Keeper reminds us that none of us know how much time we have, how much time our loved ones have, but it teaches us that we should be happy with the time we have been given and to cherish every last moment. The action of fighting up river against a raging torrent of water is sometimes easily conquered by not engaging in a fruitless battle, but merely going along with the flow, accepting what is and rejoicing in the present.

''Life goes on...''