Review: My Sister's Keeper (2009)

[Steve Rhodes]

MY SISTER'S KEEPER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  ** 1/2

Faced with a clear choice between an entirely original story and one told a 
thousand times before, director and co-writer Nick Cassavetes takes the 
easy, well trodden path.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER tells two stories.  One is the fascinating and fairly 
unique tale of an eleven-year-old girl, Andromeda 'Anna' Fitzgerald (Abigail 
Breslin), who is suing her parents so that her body will no longer be used 
for spare parts for Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), Anna's long-dying sister.  With 
plenty of potential legal intrigue, this part of the narrative plays a 
background role, more of a hook to sell the movie in the trailers than a 
central premise.  In this portion of the narrative, Alec Baldwin does a 
superb job playing Campbell Alexander, a shyster who advertizes his law 
office in all the media, bragging of his 91% success rate.  He's a lovable 
guy, who is filmed in a handsome glow.  With a service dog named "Judge," 
who goes with him everywhere, you can probably guess how one of the film's 
most effective jokes comes about.

But MY SISTER'S KEEPER isn't Anna's story.  It's Kate's, whose life we see 
in a long series of sappy montages (Kate at the beach, Kate on her first 
date, etc.), some of which, no how manipulative they are, still manage to 
work.  The setup for the plot has Kate's parents, played by a reserved Jason 
Patric and an over-the-top Cameron Diaz, creating a girl in a test tube 
(Anna) for the express purpose of being able to keep leukemia patient Kate 
alive longer.

When we join the story in progress, Anna is said to have become fed up with 
supplying her body as a medical parts growing ground for cures for Kate. 
Since Anna loves Kate dearly, this explanation appears flaky from the 
get-go.  Something else is clearly going on, other than Anna wanting to 
declare her body off-limits to her parents.  This is all such a shame, since 
in this tale of medical rebellion lurks an intriguing premise of a truly 
original motion picture.  Instead we get lots of maudlin moments, 
interrupted briefly by courtroom drama or small funny bits.

Working against the movie, which is, at its heart, a small movie, is the 
casting.  Way too many high profile actors show up in major and minor parts. 
In addition to Diaz and Baldwin, Joan Cusack plays the judge, a woman with 
her own heart-rending back story, and Emily Deschanel ("Bones") has a cameo 
as a cancer doctor.  Even Deschanel's mother, who looks like Emily, gets to 
have her own cameo.  It's all very distracting.

With a cast of more unknowns and with a focus on the legal drama, MY 
SISTER'S KEEPER could have been a mesmerizing examination of a subject 
rarely dealt with.  Instead, MY SISTER'S KEEPER plays like the thousandth 
version of a TV movie of a week about a tragically dying person.

MY SISTER'S KEEPER runs a long 1:49.  It is rated PG-13 for "mature thematic 
content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language and brief teen 
drinking" and would be acceptable for kids around 12 and up.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, June 26, 2009.  In 
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Cinemark 
theaters and the Camera Cinemas.

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