'My Sister's Keeper' keeps audience at a distance

As a heart tugger that would challenge even the wisdom of Solomon, "My Sister's Keeper" offers a sober antidote to all the flippant noisemakers in the other theaters. You may even get involved in the debate that has been taking over book clubs since the publication five years ago of the Jodi Picoult novel on which this is based.

This film is so serious, though, that it's going to be a tough sell. It's a bit too much trauma to take in one sitting, particularly when you are kept somewhat at a distance by the near-science-fiction setup. Sara, the mother played by Cameron Diaz, has lots of troubles. Her oldest daughter, Kate, is fighting against the odds of terminal leukemia. Her youngest daughter, Anna, knows that she was bred for the purpose of being able to donate body parts to save her sister (genetic engineering that would seem more appropriate for a Frankenstein movie than a family drama).

Anna, 11, is understandably wary and rebels when she is asked to give a kidney that will save Kate but will mean she will have a limited life and no children. She hires a flamboyant lawyer (Alec Baldwin, of all people) to sue her parents for "medical emancipation."

Here's the dilemma. If Anna wins the case, she will be free, but Kate will die. If Anna loses, she'll continue to give organs. If only we could phone a friend, such as King Solomon!

If all this weren't enough, Sara's husband, a fireman played by the always-intense Jason Patric, isn't as gung ho about the obsession with the older daughter. Sara is determined, at all costs, to save Kate, even if it means sacrifices to her younger daughter. She has given up her law career to remain home. Their son, Jesse, who has dyslexia and may be sneaking off to trip out on drugs, is largely ignored.

May we be forgiven for even asking, but: Do we care? We should care more than we do, encouraged by symphonic music and challenges to one's perceptions of family love and loyalty. But, somehow, it's all just way off the charts.

Director Nick Cassavetes (son of the legendary director John Cassavetes) has ample credentials in the weepie genre by way of his hit film "The Notebook" (a fine, honest drama set in the American South that touched areas of recognition rather than the melodrama here).

Diaz, making a change from her usual delightfully self-deprecating comedy roles, gets short-changed because the mother comes across as more disciplined and hard-edged than soul searching. She has no really good scenes.

Sofia Vassilieva (from TV's "Medium") steals the film as the valiantly fighting terminal patient with the shaved head and brave spirit. She has a love affair with a fellow terminally ill cancer patient, a character we assume is meant to be more irresistible than Thomas Dekker plays him. The cancer romance is yet another melodrama that keeps us distant from the proceedings.

The always-cheerful Abigail Breslin plays the sister who hires Baldwin as her lawyer. We are told he is one of those flamboyant lawyers who advertises on buses and TV and, consequently, might have been spotted by an 11-year-old.

Joan Cusack is cast as the judge who has, of course, recently lost a child of her own. The usually comedic Cusack fares well in the serious part.

The book's readers might be the primary audience, but the film risks alienating them by changing the ending.

"My Sister's Keeper" is the kind of family drama we want to see more often at the movies, but its melodrama makes it more unreal than real. Movies of this type depend almost entirely upon pangs of recognition and credibility. "Sister" is a bit too heavily loaded with angst to be easily recognized. We are interested onlookers, but we never get close enough to this movie to give it a hug.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com