Abigail & Sofia Are the Only Reasons to Watch This
Film: My Sister's Keeper (2009). Young Actresses: Abigail Breslin, 12, and Sofia Vassilieva, 15.
Several young actresses have done a "girl dying from cancer" movie. There's Jenna Boyd in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Dakota Fanning in Now Is Good, or Shailene Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars, just to name a few. My Sister's Keeper puts its own spin on the storyline; there's a girl dying from an acute form of leukemia (Sofia's Kate), but there's also her little sister (Abigail's Anna), who was conceived to be a genetic match. After eleven years of donating blood, bone marrow, and more to her sister, Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation.
Anna has a tough talk with her parents. Cameron Diaz struggles to act.
Anna loves Kate, and she knows that she only exists because Kate has leukemia. She knows that her sister will die if she doesn't donate a kidney to her, but she's also adamant about making her own medical decisions. It's a complicated mix of emotions to capture, but Abigail does it very skillfully. At the beginning of the film, Anna pawns some jewelry for money to hire a lawyer, and she's confident and assertive in his office, but when her mom is actually served with the court papers in Kate's hospital room, she gets nervous and scared about what this will do to her family. She has reason to be scared, too; the girls' mom Sara (Cameron Diaz, Annie) has an extreme favoritism for Kate, and when she first finds out about Anna's lawsuit, she slaps her across the face and tells her husband, in front of Anna, "Get her out of here. I don't want to see her face anymore."
My only complaint about Abigail's performance is that I wish there was more of it. Like their mom, the movie neglects Anna and focuses more on Kate, who is a tad unrealistically brave and perfect in the face of death. Fortunately, Sofia's acting is excellent, too. Since Kate is severely ill for most of the movie, Sofia has to deliver most of her lines in a whisper, and voice limitations like that can be restrictive for some actors - but Sofia's performance never feels restricted. In one scene, Kate watches through her hospital room window while outside in the hall, her mom yells at a doctor for mentioning hospice care and the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Kate hardly has any dialogue here, but Sofia's acting is strong enough that it doesn't need words. The movie does have a few scenes where Kate isn't perfect - in one, she says "what a bitch" about an insistent nurse, and in another, she yells at her parents when they want to take the family to an amusement park to cheer her up - but I wish there were more of them.
Thrilled to be doing something so normal, Kate gets her first kiss, comes home, and tells Anna about it.
I've said before that I love seeing current/former young actresses together, and Sofia and Abigail don't disappoint in their scenes together. The sisters have a close bond, and throughout the movie, that never changes. There are a few scenes of Kate violently throwing up or coughing blood, while Anna watches in horror, that are difficult to watch. There are also some incredibly adorable scenes of them goofing off and just being sisters. Most of these are set to instrumental music or acoustic songs; there are a lot of song sequences in this movie, and a lot of narration.
Another flaw of the movie is some of the adult actors. Cameron Diaz hasn't done many dramatic movies, and her inexperience shows here, especially since Sofia and Abigail both have more talent than her. It doesn't help that Sara is such an unlikeable character, overprotective and controlling of Kate, neglecting her other two children, and screaming at her husband that he can't take care of Kate as well as she can. Although it's implied that Kate's tried to talk to her mom about this in the past, we never actually see this happen during the film. No character ever confronts Sara about her cruel, manipulative behavior, which is frustrating. We're actually expected to feel sorry for her. In Kate's final scene - as she is literally lying there dying - she comforts her mom.
Kate and Anna have a heart-to-heart in her hospital room as their brother looks on.
And because it's based on a book by Jodi Picoult (author of bestsellers like Over-the-Top Melodrama), almost every character gets their own tragic backstory. Anna's lawyer Campbell (Alec Baldwin) has epilepsy so severe that it requires a service dog. The judge presiding over the case (Joan Cusack, costarring with Abigail for the third time) just lost her young daughter to a drunk driver. The girls' neglected brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson) has some unspecified problem that involves walking around the city at night, and was presumably explained in deleted scenes. Most of these backstories are handled well enough, but they do feel somewhat pointless - especially when Campbell's service dog barks to warn that he's about to suffer a seizure, and he tells it to be quiet, and the judge screams at it.
As a whole, My Sister's Keeper is a fairly average movie, and there's no question that Sofia and Abigail's performances are the strongest things about it.
LINKS
Other reviews of Sofia's films: Hurt (2009)
Other reviews of Abigail's films: Nim's Island (2008), August: Osage County (2013), Perfect Sisters (2014)
Won Choice Summer Movie: Drama at the Teen Choice Awards - but no serious grown-up awards, which is telling
For screenshots and a second opinion, here's the review by Young Actress Reviews
Several young actresses have done a "girl dying from cancer" movie. There's Jenna Boyd in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Dakota Fanning in Now Is Good, or Shailene Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars, just to name a few. My Sister's Keeper puts its own spin on the storyline; there's a girl dying from an acute form of leukemia (Sofia's Kate), but there's also her little sister (Abigail's Anna), who was conceived to be a genetic match. After eleven years of donating blood, bone marrow, and more to her sister, Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation.
Anna has a tough talk with her parents. Cameron Diaz struggles to act.
Anna loves Kate, and she knows that she only exists because Kate has leukemia. She knows that her sister will die if she doesn't donate a kidney to her, but she's also adamant about making her own medical decisions. It's a complicated mix of emotions to capture, but Abigail does it very skillfully. At the beginning of the film, Anna pawns some jewelry for money to hire a lawyer, and she's confident and assertive in his office, but when her mom is actually served with the court papers in Kate's hospital room, she gets nervous and scared about what this will do to her family. She has reason to be scared, too; the girls' mom Sara (Cameron Diaz, Annie) has an extreme favoritism for Kate, and when she first finds out about Anna's lawsuit, she slaps her across the face and tells her husband, in front of Anna, "Get her out of here. I don't want to see her face anymore."
My only complaint about Abigail's performance is that I wish there was more of it. Like their mom, the movie neglects Anna and focuses more on Kate, who is a tad unrealistically brave and perfect in the face of death. Fortunately, Sofia's acting is excellent, too. Since Kate is severely ill for most of the movie, Sofia has to deliver most of her lines in a whisper, and voice limitations like that can be restrictive for some actors - but Sofia's performance never feels restricted. In one scene, Kate watches through her hospital room window while outside in the hall, her mom yells at a doctor for mentioning hospice care and the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Kate hardly has any dialogue here, but Sofia's acting is strong enough that it doesn't need words. The movie does have a few scenes where Kate isn't perfect - in one, she says "what a bitch" about an insistent nurse, and in another, she yells at her parents when they want to take the family to an amusement park to cheer her up - but I wish there were more of them.
Thrilled to be doing something so normal, Kate gets her first kiss, comes home, and tells Anna about it.
I've said before that I love seeing current/former young actresses together, and Sofia and Abigail don't disappoint in their scenes together. The sisters have a close bond, and throughout the movie, that never changes. There are a few scenes of Kate violently throwing up or coughing blood, while Anna watches in horror, that are difficult to watch. There are also some incredibly adorable scenes of them goofing off and just being sisters. Most of these are set to instrumental music or acoustic songs; there are a lot of song sequences in this movie, and a lot of narration.
Another flaw of the movie is some of the adult actors. Cameron Diaz hasn't done many dramatic movies, and her inexperience shows here, especially since Sofia and Abigail both have more talent than her. It doesn't help that Sara is such an unlikeable character, overprotective and controlling of Kate, neglecting her other two children, and screaming at her husband that he can't take care of Kate as well as she can. Although it's implied that Kate's tried to talk to her mom about this in the past, we never actually see this happen during the film. No character ever confronts Sara about her cruel, manipulative behavior, which is frustrating. We're actually expected to feel sorry for her. In Kate's final scene - as she is literally lying there dying - she comforts her mom.
Kate and Anna have a heart-to-heart in her hospital room as their brother looks on.
And because it's based on a book by Jodi Picoult (author of bestsellers like Over-the-Top Melodrama), almost every character gets their own tragic backstory. Anna's lawyer Campbell (Alec Baldwin) has epilepsy so severe that it requires a service dog. The judge presiding over the case (Joan Cusack, costarring with Abigail for the third time) just lost her young daughter to a drunk driver. The girls' neglected brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson) has some unspecified problem that involves walking around the city at night, and was presumably explained in deleted scenes. Most of these backstories are handled well enough, but they do feel somewhat pointless - especially when Campbell's service dog barks to warn that he's about to suffer a seizure, and he tells it to be quiet, and the judge screams at it.
As a whole, My Sister's Keeper is a fairly average movie, and there's no question that Sofia and Abigail's performances are the strongest things about it.
LINKS
Other reviews of Sofia's films: Hurt (2009)
Other reviews of Abigail's films: Nim's Island (2008), August: Osage County (2013), Perfect Sisters (2014)
Won Choice Summer Movie: Drama at the Teen Choice Awards - but no serious grown-up awards, which is telling
For screenshots and a second opinion, here's the review by Young Actress Reviews