FLIX/Cameron Diaz a Tough Sell as Mother of Three in My Sister's Keeper

Photo by Sidney Baldwin/New Line Cinema Jesse (played by Evan Ellingson) and Anna (played by Abigail Breslin) enjoy a day at the beach in New Line Cinema's drama "My Sister's Keeper," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. The film also stars Cameron Diaz.

My inaugural column as film critic for Local Kicks took me to a screening for My Sister’s Keeper, starring Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva.  The film, directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook), is based on the Jodi Picoult novel of the same name, and is rated PG-13.

My Sister’s Keeper is set in Los Angeles and tells the story of the Fitzgerald family’s struggle to defeat the leukemia that is slowly killing their oldest daughter.  
 
Anna (Breslin) was born to basically serve as a convenience store for various organs and blood that her cancer-stricken sister Kate (Vassilieva) would need to survive.  In the beginning of the film, Anna says her conception was a well-thought out plan, unlike most other pregnancies that she claimed were the result of drunken evenings and a lack of birth control.  
 
Over time, Anna gets fed up with having no control over how her body is used to help her sister fight cancer. She takes this anger to the courts and sues for medical emancipation from her parents in order to have the final say over how her body is used.

Photo by Sidney Baldwin/New Line Cinema Cameron Diaz as Sara. One would need to be pretty hollow on the inside not to feel sympathy for a family going through the various hardships that the Fitzgeralds endure in the film and the resentful feelings some of them have towards each other.

Anna’s lawyer in the emancipation case, Campbell Alexander, is played by Alec Baldwin.  Alexander boasts a 91 percent success rate, and Anna chose him because evidently lawyer ads on TV work on 11 year olds.  
 
When Baldwin’s character was introduced to the film I thought this movie might be a long sketch on The Tracy Jordan Show and that Kenneth Parcell would be guiding us through the rest of the feature.  Sometimes I get carried away with my enjoyment of 30 Rock.  It’s a curse.

One of the better performances of the movie belongs to Joan Cusack.  She plays Judge Joan De Salvo, the ultimate decider of Anna’s suit.  It’s good to see that a District Attorney from Fryburg in My Blue Heaven can move one up the legal ranks and find a seat on the bench.  Deal with enough Vincent Antonellis or Todd Wilkinsons and people take notice.

Heather Wahlquist plays Aunt Kelly in the film.  Heather Wahlquist could also be known as Heather Cassavetes.  Of her eight film roles listed on IMDB, four have been directed by her husband and the other four you probably never heard of.  
 
Too bad I didn’t marry Penny Marshall, or maybe that could have been me dancing on a piano with Robert Loggia.  Or, at the very least, skipping down a Milwaukee street singing "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 Schlameel, Schlamazel Hassenpepper Incorporated".

In the interest of full disclosure, I never read the book that is the basis for the film and when I saw it was directed by the same guy who did The Notebook, I wasn’t exactly circling the release date (June 26) on my calendar.

But one would need to be pretty hollow on the inside not to feel sympathy for a family going through the various hardships that the Fitzgeralds endure and the resentful feelings some of them have towards each other.  
 
Eventually we learn that Anna’s goal for medical emancipation wasn’t as selfish as it originally seemed and although Kate is supposed to be the weakest Fitzgerald, at least physically, she is the strongest emotionally and the glue of the family.

Photo courtesy of New Line Cinema My Sister’s Keeper is set in Los Angeles and tells the story of the Fitzgerald family’s struggle to defeat the leukemia that  is slowly killing their oldest daughter.

The overall performances in My Sister’s Keeper were good, but not great.  
 
Abigail Breslin, an accomplished actress at a young age, plays the role of a pre-teen pulled in opposite directions pretty well.  Sofia Vassilieva had the most challenging role to play and succeeded in making the audience feel her pain, both from the cancer spreading through her body and her realization that she could die from it.  
 
Cameron Diaz was a tough sell as a mother of three children, two who were in their mid to late teens.  Plus her previous roles don’t confuse her with Meryl Streep.  After all, she willfully participated in a movie with Ashton Kutcher.  For that alone she should be barred from future Oscar consideration.  

The film was told from a number of points of view, which seemed forced at times.  Several scenes were very episodic and ended without any form of transition to the next.  This style worked in Pulp Fiction, but not in My Sister’s Keeper.  Those are two movies that will probably never be in the same sentence again.

However, if it’s your better half’s turn to pick the movie, and the choice is My Sister’s Keeper or a standard chick-flick, your time is better spent watching a heavy film that tackles an issue that effects millions of people and has touched almost everyone in some way than something featuring four girls sipping pink drinks wondering whether or not he’s really that into them.  
 
Or even worse, a film implementing three of the worst words heard in a movie advertisement, “Starring Matthew McConaughey”.

I give My Sister’s Keeper 2 turnstiles out of 4.

Steve D'Ettore of Alexandria is Local Kicks' new movie critic. Email him at stevedettorre@yahoo.com