My Sister's Keeper offers a couple of twists, one of them crucial and the other cruelly unnecessary and melodramatic.
My Sister's Keeper (2009)
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Reviews Counted:125
Fresh:58
Rotten:67
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.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, sensuality, language, and brief teen drinking.
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Jun 26, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $49,069,310
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... 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 mother of Kate (Sofia Vassilieva, MEDIUM), a young girl with cancer. Sara’s other daughter, 11-year-old Anna (Abigail Breslin), was conceived just to serve as a donor for her sick sister. On the outskirts of the family are father Brian (Jason Patric), who feels unable to stand up to his wife’s strength, and son Jesse (Evan Ellingson), who craves attention in the face of Kate’s illness. But the complicated situation gets more difficult when Anna hires a lawyer (played by the always excellent Alec Baldwin), so that she can control her own body and say "no" to giving a kidney to her sister. Cassavetes and Picoult both traffic in tears, so MY SISTER’S KEEPER is a perfect match between director and source writer. Even the most jaded viewers will find it hard to keep their eyes dry in the face of this emotional family tragedy, so audiences are warned to have tissues parked next to their popcorn. This drama’s stellar cast also includes Thomas Dekker as Kate’s cancer-stricken love and Joan Cusack as the judge who presides over Anna’s case. [More]
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, Joan Cusack, Jason Patric, Thomas Dekker, Emily Deschanel, Lin Shaye
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Screenwriter: Jeremy Leven, Nick Cassavetes
Producer: Mark Johnson, Chuck Pacheco, Scott L. Goldman
Composer: Aaron Zigman
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for My Sister's Keeper
My Sister’s Keeper, like all tearjerkers, works as a ritual as much as it does art.
Their message in My Sister's Keeper? Cancer sucks, but there's always the balm of beach scenes and an emo soundtrack.
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.
Once the bizarre premise is established, all the movie can do is wait for the story to play out -- it has a beginning and end, but no middle.
Two straight hours of emotional torture porn that is so brutally assaultive in its determination to jerk tears from viewers that it practically leaps off the screen and into their laps in order to get to them quicker.
A motion picture of notable sensitivity and beauty, hamstrung emotions kept to a minimum. Tough, touchy, provocative, and exceptionally moving.
How far would you go to save your child's life? How far should you go? Those are the questions posed and largely ducked in this film based on the book by Jodi Picolt.
Don't avoid My Sister's Keeper because it's a film about a serious issue. Avoid it because it approaches that issue like a very special episode of Grey's Anatomy -- complete with whining pop songs and all the comforts of cliche.
A shameless attempt at manipulation that wants but doesn't earn audience tears.
Keeper, striving to manipulate the audience, goes on a little longer than it should. However, the performances are so true that it's easy to forgive such unneeded, straight-to-the-heartstrings tactics.
You may cry at the film's designated crying times, approximately every 10 minutes, like the traffic and weather. Or you may not, and wonder instead why some high-gloss weepies treat their source material quite so shamelessly.
Less an exercise in catharsis than an obstacle course of premise-heavy, flashback-drenched plot points, it's an emotional flat-liner, even though virtually every character (including Alec Baldwin as the lawyer) carries some hurt or grief.
It's beautifully shot and skillfully acted, but My Sister's Keeper, an earnest family-faces-cancer drama, is a bit like a real-world horror film with 'heart,' right down to the trick ending.
This ethical drama tries to make people think about medical and family dilemmas while wringing a few tears out of them along the way.
Wailing and screaming and fighting with everyone else onscreen, Cameron Diaz is giving a powerhouse performance her character doesn't warrant.
Latest 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. ![]()
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June 25, 2009:
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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:
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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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