‘My Sister’s Keeper’ is Two Hours of Cancer
-----I would be lying if I said that I even remotely wanted to see this film. Sure it was a tearjerker about a young girl with cancer, but an even bigger detractor was that the film was over a month old by the time my theater decided to show it. Regardless, I always do my best to go into movies open minded. Of course, ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ only confirmed, and actually fell below my initial low expectations of a movie that’s soul purpose is to make you cry, no lessons learned, no purpose fulfilled.
-----‘My Sister’s Keeper’ is the story of Kate, a girl with cancer since she was little. The film would like us to believe that it’s about her sister, Anna. You see, Anna was conceived in a dish and born to be a donor for her sister, until finally she decides she doesn’t like it, so she sues her parents. Unfortunately, any entertainment that could have provided is saved for the first five minutes, and the very end of the movie. The two hours that really compose the film are slow motion, piano-driven montages of Kate. The moral of the story, cancer sucks. Why anyone would pay to see it for two hours? Well, that one still escapes me.
-----Sofia Vassilieva plays Kate. She’s good at times, particularly in scenes with Thomas Dekker and Abigail Breslin, but the bottom line is, a lot of people can act sick and depressed with the help of a professional makeup crew. Thomas Dekker plays one of the films few redeeming characters, Taylor Ambrose, a boy who is also sick with cancer. Kate and Taylor have a relationship that should hold your attention for at least a few minutes, but again, this twenty minute flashback only lends further to a crawling pace that meanders nearly as much as it bores you. Abigail Breslin plays Kate’s sister, Anna, and manages to be the only person on screen other than Dekker, who isn’t entirely depressing. Well, maybe Alec Baldwin, her hired attorney, does a bit of this too in his tiny role, but neither have a real script to work with. Playing Kate’s obsessive mother is Cameron Diaz. Yeah, she manages to be angry well, but her role becomes a primarily one note endeavor, as she rarely breaks from the “I know what’s best for you” mother cliché. Besides, why make a movie like this one when you could be entertaining people, now there’s a novel idea that ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ ignores.
-----The problem with this movie is pretty much the source material. I didn’t read the book, but I honestly can think of no reason why anyone would want to see this movie. It’s a story about a girl with cancer, one that neither enlightens, entertains, or otherwise grabs its audience. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t good tearjerkers out there, like ‘The Green Mile’ or ‘Hardball,’ but this one is about a girl whose death is, as Breslin’s character monologues in the final scenes, pointless. This may sound crude, and you may decide that I’m missing the major themes, but I can honestly say that watching this film will teach you nothing, and has no purpose other than getting tears from its audience; tears which did not flow in my case.
-----Technically, there is the occasional bit of cool cinematography, and the makeup crew certainly makes Vassilieva look sick. The music is as cliché as exhaustive as the film itself, and I really wanted to leave by the third depressing piano routine playing behind annoying voiceovers and slow motion close-ups. It is this repetitiveness which extracts even the most basic connections that are supposed to be formed with the audience throughout the film.
-----Ultimately, I hate this movie through and through. By the time the ending came, I could have been sitting in the theater for five hours for all I knew. ‘The Dark Knight’ made time fly like it was nothing, whereas ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ was one of the longest two hours I’ve ever experienced at the movies. The ending in itself is dreadful, as Breslin’s monologues repeat the same nostalgic reminiscing over and over! I kept thinking, “Hurray, it’s over!” only to have another slow motion close-up return to the screen. In the movie’s defense it has genuine moments at times, and may appeal to those who adored the book, but as for me, I found very little to like here other than the very occasional scene. By the third act most viewers will find themselves hoping that Kate would hurry up and die, because from the beginning the movie presents that as its inevitable outcome, and it freaking sucks.
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