Film Review: Multi-hankie tug at the heartstrings

'My Sister’s Keeper' is part tear-jerker, part courtroom drama

By John Beifuss

Friday, June 26, 2009

Movies generally become big hits when they break down an audience's resistance to any of three involuntary physical reactions. The first is laughing; the second is screaming; and the third is crying.

Judging from the sniffles and even sobs that almost never stopped during a recent packed preview screening, "My Sister's Keeper" -- based on the novel by best-selling child-in-peril author Jodi Picoult -- should be a boon to the manufacturers of facial tissue as well as to movie exhibitors. The audience was rapt; almost never have I been among moviegoers who seemed so intensely focused on the action onscreen.

On one level, "My Sister's Keeper" is essentially a 109-minute deathbed scene, so often is the focus on baldheaded Kate Fitzgerald (beautifully played by Oscar-worthy Sofia Vassilieva), an angelic, even wise teenager whose life has been a constant struggle with leukemia.

But "My Sister's Keeper" also is a typically outrageous Lifetime Television courthouse drama, constructed in the artful style of a Sundance drama by suave director Nick Cassavetes (responsible for another best-seller-inspired weepie, "The Notebook") and painterly cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ("The Right Stuff"). Adding to the indie vibe -- like the recent "The Soloist," this is a mainstream movie in arthouse drag -- is a soundtrack of modern cocktail jazz and pop, including songs by Jimmy Scott and Jeff Buckley.

The result is something of a paradox: tasteful manipulation. (But apparently not as manipulative as the book: The movie changes the theoretically ironic shock ending of the novel, probably for the better.)

"Little Miss Sunshine" discovery Abigail Breslin stars as Kate's younger sister, Anna, who sues her parents for "medical emancipation" so they will stop using her blood, marrow and other body parts to save Kate's life. See, Anna was conceived through in vitro fertilization "to be spare parts for Kate" -- the girls are as much donor and recipient as sister and sister. Anna was "grown in a dish, a perfect chromosomal match."

In the hands of, say, David Cronenberg, this provocative concept could have been the launching pad for a ghoulish horror movie. Picoult and her adapters, however, are more interested in women-oriented stories about what the author's Web site describes as "family, relationships and love," even if at one point Anna's firefighter father (Jason Patric) makes the surprising (and disappointing) Frankenstein-movie claim that "We went against nature."

"I want to sue my parents for the rights to my own body," Anna tells a crusading celebrity lawyer, played by Alec Baldwin (who is now almost as campy as William Shatner, thanks to "30 Rock," numerous episodes of "Saturday Night Live," and his signature husky whisper of a voice). The tension increases when the sisters' mother (a surprisingly effective Cameron Diaz) -- a former lawyer who gave up her career to care for her sick child -- comes out of retirement to oppose her own daughter in court. (More unbelievable than the melodrama is the fact that this sensational lawsuit apparently attracts no media attention.)

The courtroom drama -- the social-relevance sizzle that sells the tearjerker steak -- is silly enough to function as semi-intentional comic relief, giving the audience a much-needed break from the heartbreaking, heart-lifting family incidents that take up most of the running time, including many scenes calculated to push buttons in parents of all types. When Kate shows up in her prom dress, a wig covering her bald head, you could hear moviegoers in the preview audience catching their breath. "My Sister's Keeper" is a pretty ideal blend of movie honesty and hooey.

-- John Beifuss, 529-2394