Miss You Already - C

Quick Hit: Engineered to be a tearjerker, it doesn’t quite land the emotional impact that it should due to a messy script, despite a solid performance from Toni Collette.
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Cancer is one of those things that is almost universal. Just about everyone has lost someone to cancer, or at the very least, had them sickened before beating it. Therefore, it’s only natural that we begin to see more and more films tackle this. It wasn’t quite main stream when A Walk to Remember tackled it, but it seems to be now, with larger and larger actors attaching themselves to projects. It seems to me that almost all of the movies about cancer are based upon books first – it may be that for lots of people, books are such a personal medium that it hits home harder. That’s the case for today’s movie as well, the Drew Barrymore vehicle Miss You Already.

First off, I’m not really spoiling anything talking about the fact that one of the main characters, Milly (played by Toni Collette) gets cancer. It’s spelled out in the title, and spoken about in the main title sequence/opener. Therefore, I shouldn’t have to warn you that this is a tear-jerker (I wasn’t moved to that point, but it is sad). Jess (Drew Barrymore) also has trouble conceiving. This is a movie that is made by women for women, and at times, I felt like I should have seen my way out.

That’s because, first and foremost, this is a movie about friendship. It goes into the way that friendships form (in this case, a rescue from bullying) and how they survive and thrive in different storms of life. They even tackle the most extreme form you can imagine, someone’s impending death. The movie is easily at its best when it gets away from the distracting humor and focuses on these themes. Instead, we get this ship-on-the-waves feel to the film, as it swings back and forth between trying to hit it over the fence with laughs (rarely accomplishing) and being a down-to-earth movie.

That’s truly a shame, because Toni Collette is really good. Anytime you watch someone portraying a dying person it’s hard not to think of award-winning performances, but hers is very, very good. She perfectly illustrates the emotional spectrum that you would exhibit when dying – she is at times terrified, happy, angry, sad, and carefree. This is at its most evident during the scene with the travel to the moors. In that twenty minutes, between the travel and the hotel room and the next morning, you see Milly finally begin to accept things for what they are. It’s a shame the rest of the movie felt so forced around her performance.

The one thing that I will say is that it allows some of the other actors a chance to do some good as well. The two men, as the husbands of the two wives, show what it would be like to be mixed up in this mess. You would want to be supportive, sure, but you also need attention. That’s a difficult thing to portray, and both actors knock it out of the park. (Dominic Cooper – old Tony Stark I believe) (and Paddy Considine who I haven’t seen in much else).

Overall, the movies a mess of tones and themes, and it’s not really a good time to spend nearly two hours wading through a movie about death. However, if you can see through the murk of the moors, you’ll see some good performances shining through. I’m going to give Miss you Already a “C”.

Check out more on this movie at IMDB.