5/10
Falling under
12 May 2015
Oscar Bait from Hilary Swank who clearly wishes to add to the two Best Actress Oscars she already has. She plays Kate a classical pianist diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. ALS. She takes on Bec (Emmy Rossum) as a carer who lacks experience as a carer, an unreliable college student who spends too much time in bars and has awful timekeeping.

Bec and Kate have a fractious relationship but they also rely on each other especially when Kate throws out her husband (Josh Duhamel) when she discovers that he had a brief affair but it is really because she does not want her illness to hold him back.

The film is well acted with Duhamel playing the rather snooty but dutiful husband who has made a lapse in judgment. Swank gives a tour de force but it is really Rossum the film should focus on and with her traumas. Her drinking, unreliability, inability to hold relationships and nervousness to perform music in public. I expected the film would have a thread where Kate the classical pianist would encourage Bec's musical abilities.

Instead the film takes on other strands and too many of them so we have later on various parents coming on to the scene and the film gets lost.

The film lacked a stronger story and instead goes for movie of the week sentimentality and mawkishness.
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