REVIEW: My Sister's Keeper (2009)

Emotional manipulation runs rampant in Nick Cassavetes’ unabashedly maudlin, My Sister’s Keeper, about the Fitzgerald family’s struggle with their daughter Kate’s leukemia. To save her life, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) Fitzgerald genetically engineer another daughter, Anna (the ever-precocious Abigail Breslin), to serve as a donor for Kate (Sofia Vassilieva). However, Anna throws a wrench into their carefully laid plans when she sues for medical emancipation. While this sets the stage for a complicated and intriguing ethical debate, Cassavetes, director of 2004’s schmaltz-fest, The Notebook, seems to prefer all things saccharine to anything remotely cerebral or sincere. Rather than tackle this moral minefield, he relies heavily on extended voiceovers and music montages to try to tug our heartstrings. While much of the cast, including Diaz, Breslin, and Alec Baldwin (as Anna’s lawyer), lacks credibility, Vassilieva, as the remarkably resilient Kate, embodies the perfect blend of sweet and sardonic, tempering the over-sentimentalizing and moralizing with humor and grace. (Liesl Swanbeck)

Opens Nationwide Friday, June 26th