Step 1: Bring lots of tissue. If you don’t tear up watching My Sister’s Keeper, at least just a little, then your heart is made of stone.
Step 2: Say it with me: Cancer sucks. Based on Jodi Picoult’s novel, My Sister’s Keeper examines the disease in all its horribleness through the Fitzgerald family: lawyer mom Sara (Cameron Diaz), firefighter dad Brian (Jason Patric), 3-year-old son Jesse and 2-year-old Kate, who is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Sara vows she will not let her little girl die, and so she and Brian do everything in their power to keep Katie alive – including having another baby girl, manufactured so that she can be a matching donor to her ailing older sister. Jumping ahead, Anna (Abigail Breslin) is now 11-years-old and even after several medical procedures throughout her young life, her 15-year-old sis (Sofia Vassilieva) still isn’t getting any better. In fact, Kate is in renal failure and only a kidney transplant from Anna can save her. But Anna decides she has had enough and stands up for her rights to do what she wants with her own body by suing her parents for medical emancipation. Sara is completely floored and refuses to face the inevitability of the situation – but Kate doesn’t. I’m telling ya, Kleenex is required.
Step 3: Pat Cameron Diaz on the back. Casting her wouldn’t have been my first choice, especially since she’s having to play older, but the actress pulls off the dramatics as the fiercely determined Sara with aplomb. After turning in such a quirky performance in Being John Malkovich, I always knew she’d show her mettle again. It is also nice to see Patric again, playing the tortured Brian, who does all he can to try to keep his family together. Vassilieva is a marvel as Kate, a normal teenager in every way, save for the fact she is dying. The young actress isn’t afraid to go there in this performance, letting all the ravages of this disease show on her face. Only Breslin seems misplaced at times. Even though she does a fine job as Anna, maybe it’s just some of her natural precociousness that gets in the way.
Step 4: Give special kudos to Alec Baldwin. His understated turn as Anna’s lawyer highlights what a good actor he truly is.
Step 5: If you want melodramatics done right, hire director Nick Cassavetes. He brought romance and vitality to life from Nicolas Sparks’ novel The Notebook and does the same with My Sister’s Keeper. Although I generally have a tough time with movies of this type – what I categorize as Lifetime movie-of-the-weeks – Cassavetes proves he can take the material and turn it into a big-screen gem. Be warned, though. The scenes with Kate getting ill are very graphic and, what I would imagine, realistic. Ugh. There also has been some flack over the fact the movie ends differently than the book, but not having read the book, the ending seems to fit the film’s tone perfectly.
Level of difficulty in watching My Sister’s Keeper: Easy – but also very hard watching through blurry eyes.