My Sister's Keeper (2009)
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Reviews Counted:124
Fresh:58
Rotten:66
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.
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... [More]
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Reviews for My Sister's Keeper
| Tomatometer | Critic | Review | Category |
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 2/5 |
Diaz is a whiny irrelevance, but sharp supporting work from Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack makes the proceedings tolerable for boyfriends. Full Review |
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1/5 |
You should consent to having treacle intravenously injected into your system sooner than go to see this Hollywood weepie. Full Review |
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Directed by Nick Cassavetes with a syrupiness that would, I imagine, have made his father John smack the New York sidewalks in fury. Full Review |
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2/5 |
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. Full Review |
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2/5 |
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. Full Review |
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1/5 |
With direction this leaden and scripting this ham-fisted, my suspicion is that there will be far too many dry eyes in the house. Full Review |
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 4/5 |
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. Full Review |
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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. Full Review |
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1/5 |
This medical-ethics drama is like a sustained assault on the tear ducts. Full Review |
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2/5 |
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. Full Review |
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3/5 |
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. Full Review |
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1/5 |
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. Full Review |
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4/5 |
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. Full Review |
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3/5 |
My Sister’s Keeper, like all tearjerkers, works as a ritual as much as it does art. Full Review |
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An awkwardly structured but warmly emotional and relatively unsentimental drama. Full Review |
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2/4 |
The film has a profound and compelling premise. Regrettably, it seems intent on being about everything but that premise. Full Review |
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4/10 |
I tried to keep an open mind, hoping something would win me over. It didn't happen. Full Review |
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4/5 |
[I]ntelligent, moving and even occasionally funny, although you might want to bring along a few tissues just in case. Full Review |
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Cassavetes...shows great skill in weaving bright moments -- even an adolescent romance -- into the gloom. It's still bittersweet, but like mass-produced crème caramel, never too bitter. Full Review |
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[Cassavetes] refuses to let the material speak for itself, putting a famous-for-making-women-cry song behind almost every scene, and lingering on every sentimental moment. Full Review |
1 CommentLatest 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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