Thursday, 6 October 2011

DVD review: Extraordinary Measures


The father of a child affected by a rare disease actually starts a biotech company to develop a cure.

Ah, the ever lovable sub genre of extraordinary stuff done by parents to save their sick children.
As a tear jerkin, oh my god those kids are sick, movie it kinda works. Is based on a true story, which always adds gravitas, and the kids on the wheelchair are certainly heart rending. Is the other half, the interesting one, that doesn’t really work.
See when the movie shift from the family matters to the “lets develop a cure” stuff it becomes confused. Our heroes face many problems but we don’t really understand them. The only clear point is that the doctor is very antisocial and that if he had a better personality everything would be much easier.
That’s a problem, they substituted the actual problems that they weren’t able to explain, with fictional problem which are simply much less interesting.
A part from that the movie got decent pacing and solid work from everybody involved. Harrison ford plays yet another time the person with no social skills which he did so much better in Morning Glory and Cowboys and Aliens while Brendan Fraser and Keri Russel deliver all the angsty stuff.
There is the seed of a good movie here, shame that they couldn’t build on it.

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