Review: Miss You Already

Miss You Already can be a difficult watch, and not always for its intended reasons. The film has all the best intentions, not to mention the always winning presences of Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette, but its pedestrian narrative and inability to mesh its comedic and dramatic elements render it an underwhelming and generic tearjerker.

Jess (Barrymore) and Milly (Collette) have been inseparable since they first met each other in a London grade school. (Though the child actress who plays Jess is unmistakably British, Barrymore exerts no effort in masking her American accent; it's a wise, though slightly distracting, move.) They experience all the important milestones together - first kisses, first sexual encounters, etc. - they Milly tends to pip Jess to the post on most things. She's the first to become a wife - to roadie turned family man Kit (Dominic Cooper) - and a mother to two adorable moppets. Jess hasn't done too badly for herself - she's married to oil-rig worker Jago (Paddy Considine), who's away most of the time but is loving and caring in the few instances he's seen at home. Jess and Jago have yet to start a family the natural way and have turned to IVF treatments to help them conceive. The opening moments are choked with tons of backstory, and lots of laughter and happiness.

And then come the tears. Milly is diagnosed with breast cancer, and the bulk of the film deals with her treatment and the havoc her disease wreaks on her marriage and friendship. Jess withholds the news of her pregnancy, not wanting to hurt her friend with her good news whilst Milly's life is falling apart. Milly's mother, TV star Miranda (Jacqueline Bisset), does what she can to show support but she always seems to make the situation worse, though Milly recognises that her mother is trying the best she can. Kit, meanwhile, further erodes Milly's self-esteem when he loses his desire for her after she undergoes a double mastectomy.

Though Miss You Already attempts to distinguish itself by putting a lighthearted spin on unrelentingly grim material, it is actually more effective when director Catherine Hardwicke's toughmindedness overcomes Morwenna Banks' maudlin and frequently shameless script. Scenes of a needle inserted in Milly's veins or the results of her double mastectomy are unsparing, and no scene may be more moving than Milly, Jess and Miranda's visit to a wigmaker's shop. Frances de la Tour as the wigmaker does so much with so little. The way her hands cradle and comfort Milly's head (and her heart) is palpably affecting. Indeed, de la Tour and Bisset are the most powerful performers in the film, their subtlety and economic reliance on melodrama lending a depth otherwise lacking.

The film's final half hour is especially contrived with Jago attending his child's birth via video chat, but this is but another in a series of inane and overly familiar moments (a road trip to the North York moors, the ladies dancing to R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion") that weigh down the film. The believable rapport between Barrymore and Collette almost makes these missteps forgivable, but it's difficult to overlook the fact that Jess and Milly never become fully multi-dimensional characters.

Miss You Already

Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke

Written by: Morwenna Banks

Starring: Drew Barrymore, Toni Collette, Dominic Cooper, Paddy Considine, Jacqueline Bisset, Frances de la Tour, Tyson Ritter