My Sister's Keeper

Rating:

* *

Verdict:

Life versus death debate is stifled by corny casting and washy songs.

Almost everyone knows someone who has, either directly or indirectly, been affected by cancer. Which is why

My Sister's Keeper

can't help being a poignant and teary-eyed tale.

The Fitzgeralds' eldest daughter Kate has been fighting leukemia since she was a toddler. Their second daughter Anna was scientifically created as the perfect match to donate blood and bone marrow, and anything else that would save her sister's life.

Now 11, Anna is suing her parents for medical emancipation, even though she knows Kate will die without her kidney.

But though your sniffles may have soaked the pages of the Jodi Picoult novel, the screen adaptation is too slow, disjointed and most of all, too corny to evoke the same emotional response.

This is due to a sappy soundtrack, and casting Cameron Diaz as the matriarch, Sara. Picoult may have set the book around an all-American family with a blonde mummy and buff daddy, but Diaz takes the stereotype too far. She is too bubbly-Miss-blue-eyes for the role of a mother who has been fighting for her eldest daughter's life for a decade. Sure, her hair is lank, her grey cardi is bobbly, her face makeup-free, but she is still unconvincing. Even shaving her head is not enough.

The children on the other hand, are brilliant. Abigail Breslin, who audiences fell in love with as the pinch-her-cheeks Olive Hoover in

Little Miss Sunshine

, is just as delightful as gutsy Anna. And the juicy-lipped beauty Sofia Vassilieva pulls off a difficult role as a shaven, bruised and sickly Kate with real heart. She appears in some delicate scenes with her boyfriend, fellow cancer patient Taylor Ambrose (Thomas Dekker), as well as horrifyingly realistic scenes of her suffering through waves of chemotherapy and cancer.

It's unfortunate that the kids' stellar performances are encased in an otherwise banal film.

Do take your tissues, as it is, by nature, affecting, but prepare for a drippy drawn-out ending and if you haven't read the book, for a 180-degree twist in the plot.

Jacqueline Smith

Director:

Nick Cassavetes

Cast:

Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva, Jason Patric, Evan Ellingson, Joan Cusack, Alec Baldwin, Thomas Dekker

Running time:

109 minutes

Rating:

PG