My Sister's Keeper

There's a young actress named Sofia Vassilieva who plays Kate, a teenager dying of leukemia, in My Sister's Keeper. The central conflict of the film is a lawsuit filed by Kate's younger sister Anna (Abigail Breslin), who doesn't want to be forced to give her sister a kidney after a childhood of being used as a spare parts shop as her sister's medical condition worsens. I haven't read the novel by Jodi Picoult on which My Sister's Keeper is based but it couldn't really spend any less time examining the suspect motives of Kate's parents (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) for having Anna than the film does. Director Nick Cassavetes instead opts for gauzy and fluttery "moments" in which the sisters bond and an extended scene of Dad taking the whole family to the beach. There's a terrible late scene in which Kate's extended family sits around her hospital room and offers bland affirmations of the "keep fighting" and "think positive" variety to the dying girl. Everyone has their own personal drama in My Sister's Keeper; each member of the family gets a crack at voice-over narration as does the lawyer (Alec Baldwin) hired by Anna in her lawsuit. There's also a judge played by Joan Cusack with a backstory engineered to make her more sympathetic to the family's predicaments. The only reason to care about this bland porridge of affirmation is the sweet-faced Vassilieva, who is forced to endure horrible indignities as Kate gets sicker.(The usually reliable Breslin is largely wasted) Kate's hunger for life and gentle acceptance of her situation permeates enough of My Sister's Keeper to make the film watchable despite structural problems and prepackaged conflicts. Rent it and stock up on Kleenex.