'My Sister's Keeper' review

Cameron Diaz and Sofia Vassilieva (Credit: Sidney Baldwin/Warner Bros.)

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Star Treks: Cameron Diaz

Box office success came naturally for this former model

"That's my sister Kate. She's dying," says 11-year-old Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin, solid), a loving sister who, after being conceived in a lab and spending her life donating tissue to fight Kate's leukemia, refuses to hand over her kidney. As the film jumps around in time from Kate's initial diagnosis to late-stage difficulties, Anna and her attorney (a badly miscast Alec Baldwin) sue her mom (Cameron Diaz) for "medical emancipation" to ensure that she can keep her organ.

The buzz: Director/co-writer Nick Cassavetes, who already had a hit tearjerker with 2004's "The Notebook," could do it again with his adaptation of Jodi Picoult's wildly popular novel. The question is if the movie can bring viewers inside the Fitzgerald family to truly experience what it's like to have a daughter/sister with cancer—or if the film will yank too hard on the heartstrings, and just express sorrow shorthand with a few tears and some blood.

The verdict: Feeling little for "My Sister's Keeper" doesn't mean you're insensitive to the plight of cancer patients and their families. It means you don't go for a movie that does little with its biggest ethical question (Is it wrong to have a child just for the sake of their bone marrow/kidney?), uses jumbled chronology to distance itself from the daily grind of a terminal disease and leans hard on pushy music that hits bottom with a laughably moody cover of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." The absurd courtroom scenes nearly ruin the movie, which hits some authentic emotional notes but mostly tries so hard to check in with everybody (dad, brother, sister, mom, etc.) that it doesn't get close enough to anyone.

Did you know? Anna remarks that, "Most babies are products of drunken evenings and lack of birth control." Good thing 11-year-olds are the foremost experts on alcohol, birth control and pregnancy, or that statement might sound ridiculous.

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