A very satisfying, if emotionally draining, experience. Needless to say you should take a large box of hankies - plus a bottle of water so you can rehydrate afterwards.
My Sister's Keeper (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:125
Fresh:58
Rotten:67
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: My Sister's Keeper gets fine performances from its adult and child actors, but the director's heavy-handed approach turns a worthy emotional subject into an overly melodramatic tearjerker.
Rated: 12A [See Full Rating] for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language, and brief teen drinking.
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:26-06-2009
Synopsis: THE NOTEBOOK's Nick Cassavetes directs another tearjerking literary adaptation with this drama based on Jodi Picoult's novel. Cameron Diaz takes a detour from comedy to play Sara, the domineering... THE NOTEBOOK's Nick Cassavetes directs another tearjerking literary adaptation with this drama based on Jodi Picoult's novel. Cameron Diaz takes a detour from comedy to play Sara, the domineering mother of Kate (Sofia Vassilieva, MEDIUM), a young girl with cancer. Sara’s other daughter, 11-year-old Anna (Abigail Breslin), was conceived just to serve as a donor for her sick sister. On the outskirts of the family are father Brian (Jason Patric), who feels unable to stand up to his wife’s strength, and son Jesse (Evan Ellingson), who craves attention in the face of Kate’s illness. But the complicated situation gets more difficult when Anna hires a lawyer (played by the always excellent Alec Baldwin), so that she can control her own body and say "no" to giving a kidney to her sister. Cassavetes and Picoult both traffic in tears, so MY SISTER’S KEEPER is a perfect match between director and source writer. Even the most jaded viewers will find it hard to keep their eyes dry in the face of this emotional family tragedy, so audiences are warned to have tissues parked next to their popcorn. This drama’s stellar cast also includes Thomas Dekker as Kate’s cancer-stricken love and Joan Cusack as the judge who presides over Anna’s case. [More]
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, Joan Cusack, Jason Patric, Thomas Dekker, Emily Deschanel, Lin Shaye
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Screenwriter: Jeremy Leven, Nick Cassavetes
Producer: Mark Johnson, Chuck Pacheco, Scott L. Goldman
Composer: Aaron Zigman
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for My Sister's Keeper
My Sister’s Keeper becomes a well-heeled weepie in which the family’s comfortable existence, despite the misfortunes of fate, is hardly challenged at all.
An awkwardly structured but warmly emotional and relatively unsentimental drama.
My Sister’s Keeper, like all tearjerkers, works as a ritual as much as it does art.
Tears will be shed as the promised courtroom drama is displaced by other developments - Joan Cusack almost steals the pic as the lachrymose judge who has lost a young daughter herself.
My Sister’s Keeper ducks some of the bigger moral dilemmas, which may have added more grit. There again this is not a film with grit on its mind, just how quickly it can have you reaching for a handkerchief.
This medical-ethics drama is like a sustained assault on the tear ducts.
With direction this leaden and scripting this ham-fisted, my suspicion is that there will be far too many dry eyes in the house.
You should consent to having treacle intravenously injected into your system sooner than go to see this Hollywood weepie.
Directed by Nick Cassavetes with a syrupiness that would, I imagine, have made his father John smack the New York sidewalks in fury.
Full of clunky voiceovers, corny music and maudlin montages, this manipulative yarn plays with issues of medical morality and parental duty only to discard them in favour of a manipulative paean to valuing life and accepting death.
By the end we are screaming to yank our engines away from the forecourt as fuel spills – all that piano music, that gilded lighting, those glycerine tears – threatening a pyre of sense, sensibility and supersensitive subject choice.
This movie cheapens the experience of a family struggling to come to terms with the impending loss of a loved one. Cry? I very nearly did. Just not in the way Cameron probably hoped.
It would be tough not to shed a tear for any child forced to look death in the face, but it's also a crying shame that such a delicate matter ends up being treated with an uncertain heavy hand.
Diaz is a whiny irrelevance, but sharp supporting work from Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack makes the proceedings tolerable for boyfriends.
Given how easily the filmmakers could have cranked up the string section and gone for the quivering lip in soft focus, their restraint is admirable.
An adaptation that, although departing dramatically from such key elements as the book's ending, will please fans.
As an example of the age old Hollywood weeper as post-modern semi-serious character study, Nick Cassavete's My Sister's Keeper is too safe to be wholly successful, too powerful to be merely pushed aside.
If My Sister's Keeper feels melodramatic and contrived, it is, at least, sincerely so.
Latest News for My Sister's Keeper
July 26, 2009:
Win a poster signed by Cameron Diaz
How would you like to have a poster of Cameron Diaz on your wall -- signed by the lady herself? To celebrate this week's release of Cameron's latest film, My Sister's Keeper,... More...
June 27, 2009:
Easily the most poignant picture of the year, achieved without resorting to manipulative soap opera devices. ![]()
More...
June 25, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Transformers 2 Is Less Than Meets The Eye
This week at the movies, we've got robots in disguise (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, starring Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf) and a family in disrepair (My Sister's Keeper,... More...
June 25, 2009:
Box Office Guru Preview: Transformers Set to Smash Records
This summer's major artillery has taken over North American multiplexes with the mid-week launch of the action tentpole Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which aims to become... More...
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