'Sister’s Keeper' has drama, but loses audience

• By JOHN WIRT
• Movie critic
• Published: Jul 2, 2009

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My Sister’s Keeper, a tear-fest of a medical drama about a girl afflicted with leukemia, is only an hour and 46 minutes long. It seems much, much longer.

Ill since early childhood, 15-year-old Kate seemingly has the greatest of allies in her little sister, Anna.

In this film based on Jodi Picoult’s novel, Anna is conceived, at the suggestion of a doctor, as a genetically engineered child who doctors can exploit to keep her older sister alive.

A child in Anna’s position doesn’t understand why her mother is always dragging her to frightening hospital visits.

 Even if she does understand and decide not to go along, Anna lacks the power to refuse to submit to the medical procedures. But then, at age 11, Anna decides she’s done enough.

My Sister’s Keeper gets a dramatic, promising start when Anna walks into a law office and announces to a calm but surprised attorney, “I want to sue my parents for the rights to my own body.” When the attorney asks Anna if she is sure about this, the girl simply says yes. “Good for you,” the lawyer says.

The set-up and momentum in the latter pivotal scene gets squandered. Because the story of Kate, Anna, their brother, Jesse, and the children’s parents is told in long, nonchronological flashbacks, My Sister’s Keeper loses its way. It loses the audience, too. 

Scenes in Anna’s lawyer’s office and a Los Angeles courtroom bracket a sprawling account of Kate’s illness. Tears are inevitable. This is, after all, the story of a dying child, and the child is dying for years. But much of My Sister’s Keeper contains an authenticity that millions of people who’ve watched one or more family members die from cancer will recognize, including emotional collateral damage to care-giving relatives.

Cameron Diaz, in a bid to make the transition from her customary romantic-comedy roles to drama, plays Kate and Anna’s mother, Sara. Usually seen in the film without makeup, Diaz’s Sara understandably is too busy caring for her sick child to be movie-star glamorous.

Perhaps Diaz does as much as any good actress can do with Sara, but this mother fighting for her child’s life becomes the story’s villain. As written, Sara is a controlling, narrowly focused woman more interested in her own power than the well-being of her family. Despite the tears the movie inspires, Sara, Kate and, most of all, the film’s screenwriters, fall short of fostering empathy.

Though she’s in a drowning movie,  Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine, Signs) gives another performance that shows why she’s such a compelling young actress. And Sofia Vassilieva goes the extra mile in her demanding role as Kate. But it’s the wily Alec Baldwin, playing Anna’s lawyer, who quietly steals the movie, even though he’s rarely on screen. When a lawyer steals a movie, that movie desperately needs a script doctor.