Written by Jeremy Leven, Nick Cassavetes, and Jodi Picoult
Directed by Nick Cassavetes

Back in 2009, I had three teenage girls living at home. We were all fans of Jodi Picoult’s books.  We were all looking forward to the screen adaptation of her novel My Sister’s Keeper, which I had read.  I went with my girls to see the film and have a girls’ night out.

The story is of a typical American family with one major difference.  When daughter Kate was three years old, she was diagnosed with leukemia.  Needing bone marrow and with no other donors in sight, Mom and Dad have a designer baby, genetically selected to be a perfect match for her.

Anna joins the family, but is, from birth, donating parts of her body to her sister, be it cord blood, bone marrow, or other things that can be replenished.  This has allowed Kate to live into her teen years.  However, now Kate is facing renal failure brought on by all the chemotherapy and radiation over the years.  Of course, everyone expects Anna to donate one of her kidneys to Kate.

However, Anna has different ideas.  She hires lawyer Campbell Alexander to represent her to become medically emancipated from her parents so that she can make her own decisions about her body and not donate a kidney to Kate.  The court case goes forward as Kate’s health deteriorates.

I have to say, the cast in this picture is superb, especially the young girls who portray Kate and Anna.  Abigail Breslin portrays Anna, and although she is the center of the court case, we see more of her from a personal perspective than anything else.  In the beginning, her motives will seem cold to someone who hasn’t already read the book – her sister is dying, and she seems more concerned with how donating a kidney will affect her ability to play soccer.  There is more to it than that, and Breslin does an excellent job of being strong and depicting a girl who has grown up long before she should have had to because of her situation in life.

Sofia Vassilieva as Kate really steals the movie.  She wasn’t afraid to really become the cancer patient and actually did shave her head, wearing a wig made of her own hair when she needed to.  She yearns to be the normal teenager and seems to be handling everything life throws at her with grace, but the reality of how she feels is something that generally seems to be the tie that binds her and her siblings together.  She is the focus of the family in happier times, which are shown in flashbacks throughout the film.

Alec Baldwin doesn’t have as much of a role in this as Campbell did in the book, but he does fine in the scenes he’s in.  The adult time is also focused on the family.  Cameron Diaz as Sara, the mother, was excellent.  I have never been sure of how I felt about her as an actress, but she is terrific here as Sara, who is neither saint nor sinner.  She is simply a mother who doesn’t know how to do anything else except fight with everything she has to save one of her children.  Jason Patric also nails the part of Brian, the father.  He’s a bit more sensitive to the emotional well-being of the family, and does so without being a wimp.  I wish we could have had more scenes with him and Anna at the fire department, where he worked, as those parts of the book were excellent.

For anyone who’s read the book, there are a number of changes.  The setting was in Massachusetts, and the movie transferred the family to Los Angeles.  Brother Jesse (portrayed by Evan Ellingson) was much more of a juvenile delinquent in the book, which was pretty much jettisoned here, as was the romance for Campbell.  There is mention of Jesse not getting the attention he should have, and his education and own disability get neglected.  I didn’t have a problem with it as it was pretty much extraneous to the central story.  Campbell’s dog is still there, and although there isn’t as much made about why he needs a service dog throughout the movie, it’s still there.  Kate’s sister isn’t on the fringes of their life, entering it once again when this current crisis rears up – instead, she has been right there with the family all along.  There’s also nothing about the family’s financial situation caused by all the medical bills.

I was really fine with all of the changes up until this point.  What I did have a problem with was how the ending was changed.  I was waiting for what I knew was coming and was shocked to the point that I was saying, “That’s not what was supposed to happen!”  The movie is still a tear-jerker that left me sobbing in the theater, but it lacked the emotional punch to the gut that the book had with its ending.

Overall, I liked the film for the same reason I liked the book – it raised questions about when someone has the right to say “no”.  When does Anna get the right to say what happens to her own body?  It is also timely with the recent case in the news about the boy who’s Mom took him away while the judge ordered him to undergo chemotherapy – when is he old enough to decide for himself and choose to let nature take its course?  This film was under production long before that case came to light, but it will make many think of it.  Most families like mine will sit there and just be thankful they never have to go through this.

The pace of the film is pretty good.  Most of the story seems to be told in flashback from the current time as the case is going on.  We see the family in happier times, although Kate’s illness always seems to be there.  Still, she has some semblance of a normal life at times.  Kate has put together a scrapbook to remember these times, and the audience gets to see them as she goes through it.

My girls and I talked about it.  The 14-year-old didn’t cry at all – I have no idea what’s wrong with her.  My older one did, but thinks it would have been even more emotional if they had left it with the ending I described to her from the book.  Both of them liked the film, although it does feel like 105 minutes of watching a family fall apart.  There’s a bit of payoff in the end, but I think it would have been better if they had stuck with the way the book ended instead.