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At this time of the year, moviegoers typically head to theaters for big-budget thrills: explosions, effects, and big-name actors. They want action, adventure…and maybe a few good laughs. For those moviegoers, there’s Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But, for those few moviegoers who, for some reason, want to spend two hours in tears, there’s My Sister’s Keeper, from The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes.
More than a decade ago, Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) were told that their young daughter, Kate, had leukemia. Sara quit her job as a high-powered lawyer to care for Kate full-time, and—with some off-the-record encouragement from their oncologist—they made the decision to engineer a test-tube baby that would be Kate’s genetic match.
For eleven years, Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) has undergone endless surgeries and procedures to keep Kate (played as a teen by Sofia Vassilieva) alive—but now she’s had enough. So, with the help of her older brother, Jesse (Evan Ellingston), she goes to TV lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) and asks him to help her sue her parents for medical emancipation.
Based on the novel by Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper is relentlessly heartbreaking from start to finish. This isn’t some star-crossed love story that builds slowly, only to fall apart in a flash flood of tears in the end. Instead, it’s a non-stop sob-fest, with one tissue-soaking scene after another. The tears will stream down your face as Kate battles her ever-worsening illness (which is often depicted in the most shockingly graphic of ways)…and as Anna struggles with the knowledge that her older sister will die if she doesn’t donate a kidney…and as Jesse is completely ignored by everyone in his family. Fortunately, Baldwin provides the occasional comic relief, but the film’s lighter moments are few and far between.
It’s all perfectly manipulative. From script to score, it’s all carefully designed to make the audience cry—and it certainly succeeds. Thanks to skillful performances by Breslin, Diaz, and (especially) Vassilieva, you’d have to be a heartless monster to make it through its nearly two hours of sickness and suffering and heavy family drama without shedding a single tear. It’s excruciatingly heartbreaking—so much so, in fact, that, by the end of the movie, you’ll barely be able to hear the dialogue over the snorts, sniffles, and sobs coming from every corner of the theater. So, as far as tear-jerkers go, My Sister’s Keeper is definitely a success.
Still, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would willingly choose to sit through nearly two hours of heartbreak and tears. This isn’t an uplifting movie. It’s not heartwarming. It’s sad. I can honestly say that I felt depressed and exhausted as I drove home from the theater. But, I suppose, if you feel that you need a good cry—and you can’t think of anything else to cry about—My Sister’s Keeper is the perfect cure for your critical case of cheeriness.
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