Ushers should prepare themselves to get out the mops for My Sister’s Keeper, as small rivulets of tears coalesce into a Mississippi Delta at the bottom of the theater after each showing. But director Nick Cassavetes, who soaked his share of hankies with the 2004 sleeper hit The Notebook, doesn’t know the difference between good tears and bad ones. He just greedily draws them out of a scenario so bleak and heart-wrenching that it needs no further emphasis, let alone the dirgey cover of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” Based on Jodi Picoult’s bestseller, the film includes a multitude of combustible elements: a little girl with leukemia, another little girl genetically manipulated to be a “donor child,” a dyslexic boy so neglected that he hangs out at night on Hollywood Boulevard, a mother whose unwavering devotion to one daughter threatens to blow a hole through her family like a wrecking ball. The list goes on.
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