Given the title, it’s clear that director Catherine Hardwicke’s new film “Miss You Already” is not a happy picture. The movie tells the tale of two best friends, Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette), one struggling to get pregnant, the other struggling with her recent breast cancer diagnosis.
It’s a “my best friend has cancer, how do I cope?” movie. Like “50/50”, except full of mom humor and clichéd montages.
Milly is a mother who acts like a rambunctious 16-year-old, works as a hotshot PR director and is married to a roadie, Kit (Dominic Cooper), who got her pregnant and then married her. Jess is the sensible friend, always trying to keep wacky Milly grounded.
Neither performance comes across as genuine as each actress is just a little too exaggerated to be believable. Collette’s performance improves toward the latter half of the film, but it’s hard to tell if her performance has gotten better or if the makeup making her look sick has just gotten more realistic.
The opening scene of the movie features Jess as the narrator, with unnecessary voiceover commentaries that only appear at the beginning and end. After the quick vocal introduction to the plot, the scene quickly jumps to a sticky, saccharine snapshot memory montage of the two best friends throughout the years. Every scene is stereotypical, amplified and a failure in provoking the nostalgic feeling they were clearly pushing.
Jess and her husband Jago (Paddy Considine) get into constant, cartoonish fights as they try to balance their pregnancy attempts and Milly’s diagnosis. Considine’s character can’t seem to commit to getting angry and every fight feels forced and awkward. They happen consistently and they never get any better in execution.
The relationship between Jess and Jago never feels quite right. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the plot never explains why they live on a boat and exactly what Jago’s career is that causes him to do construction in the middle of the ocean.
Halfway through the movie, there’s the introduction of a problematic, young and good-looking rocker bartender that enters Milly’s life. After getting over the fact that his name is “Ace,” it’s revealed the actor is in fact Tyson Ritter, lead singer of The All-American Rejects.
This fact is extremely evident to audience members — Ritter has an “AAR” tattoo very visibly on his chest in many of the scenes. Every scene between Collette and Ritter is littered with literal symbolism, with Collette even wearing devil horns in one of them to show that this is, in fact, a bad relationship. As if it wasn’t clear already.
There are some positives to the film. The story takes place in gorgeous London, allowing beautiful scenery shots and some provocative cinematography. An entire portion of the movie takes place in Yorkshire, so at least one of the uncomfortable fight scenes has a nice, scenic background.
Every house is lavish and easy on the eyes, allowing for alluring shots like ivy on the walls and birds-eye shots from high balconies. Again, though, these elements create impractical plot points.
Conveniently, the location of London allows it to rain in every sad scene. The movie strains symbolism where it doesn’t need to be. There is also the question of how each family in the film can afford such nice living spaces.
The movie tries to be a tearjerker and the end product is nothing but overwhelming. There are about five different plots overlapping as the movie unfolds, each more upsetting than the last.
The film presents unbelievable, unfortunate coincidences regarding pregnancy and cancer diagnoses, creating one hard hit after the other. It gets uncomfortable to watch after awhile. These tough plot points create parallels between the characters in a not-so-good way.
The unrealistic and forced nature of it all makes the film difficult to keep up with and still feel sympathy toward the characters.
Some scenes were funny and had good comedic timing, but they were slightly drowned out by the confusion of everything else. The sad and the funny cancel each other out in the film and never find a good balance. The film is draining and drags on. It’s a little too long.
“Miss You Already” presents some realistic and mildly humorous elements to the hackneyed cancer plot, but for the most part, the film is overdramatic and hard to take seriously. The movie ends as it began, with Barrymore’s overly cheery voice over and a clichéd montage with inappropriately upbeat music, allowing the audience to finally feel joy now that it is all over.
“Miss You Already” opens at the Kendall Square Cinema on Friday.
