Synopsis:

Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive.

The Freak's Rating: C- : When bad weather hits a vacation, some get upset.  I tend to get happy.  If everyone is together and outside activities are out of the question, it means one of two things.  We'll either end up talking and playing games or seeing a movie.  Thankfully for me our recent MEL vacation (McCasland, Elder and Lazan) had an incredibly long bad weather stretch.  We saw two films in the theater, My Sister's Keeper and Public Enemies.  So though some of my family was saddened by the lack of sunny weather, I couldn't have been happier with it.

My Sister's Keeper is based upon a popular book by the same name.  Most of the women who attended the screening with me (yes, I was the only male) had read the book and were well prepared for the film.  MSK doesn't pretend for one second that it isn't a dramatic film or that it isn't intended to pull your heartstrings repeatedly until you burst into tears.  There was sobbing in nearly every row of the theater, but I was only choked up once (more later).

Cameron Diaz, having hit the wall hard about three years ago, is still trying to cling to her looks.  In one scene, she wakes and gets out of bed caked in makeup.  Come on!  There's Something About Mary was 11 years ago and she just isn't the hot girl anymore.  Diaz will be more believable as an actress when she accepts this and doesn't keep us the charade.  On screen she delivers about as well as a baked potato would.  When Diaz cries, I nearly laugh at the ridiculousness of her performance and she kills every scene she is in, especially the final few.

The always underrated Jason Patric is wonderful here as Brian Fitzgerald, the father of the two girls.  The scene where Kate asks him, "do I look pretty Daddy?" is heartbreaking and without Patric's performance it is nothing.  I got choked up there.  Virtual newcomer and Minneapolis native Sofia Vassilieva puts on a nice performance as Kate, sadly having to spew out lines from an awful adapted screenplay.  Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack are all pitch perfect in their performances as well.

So you might ask, if most of the acting is good, why the C-?  As I said, Diaz is ridiculous with every line of dialogue she utters.  The screenplay is horribly done with major holes in the storyline.  Are we to believe that a teenager would sue her parents for rights to her own body without any media coverage?  Are we also to believe that not only would the trial be accelerated through our justice system, but the defendant's attorney wouldn't lobby for a trial by jury?  I am told these gaps are addressed in the book.  Diaz' character is also shown with extreme mood swings from fully supporting both her daughters to chastising them in a court of law (within minutes of each other) and it just isn't believable.

The narrative switch from character to character is beautifully done and a nice touch to the film (one I'm told the writer, Jodi Picoult, developed and was lifted from her writing style).  Kate's teenage romance is where the true heart of the film lies, and without those scenes this is a solid D-.  Some of the performances are notably strong (primarily Patric), but all in all this is a failure.  With such an original story more attention should have been paid to it instead of rushing into production while the book was still on the best seller list.  Had more time been taken, a different lead actress chosen and the original ending stuck to in a more finely tuned adapted screenplay, this really had potential.  As it stands, this is a Hallmark movie of the week at best.

Joyce's Rating: C+ : The book was so much better than the movie (which usually happens).There were some moving parts when the tissues had to be taken out. Also the ending of the book was different from the movie. But overall I was a little disappointed.

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