Extraordinary Measures

At the very least, I expected to cry. I mean, a movie based on a true story about a father struggling to get a drug on the market to save his two dying children? Two hankies, minimum.

But Extraordinary Measures, while certainly well-intentioned, is so ill-conceived, it doesn't even work on the most basic of levels. It's a tear jerker that is incapable of jerking tears.

One of the film's central problems is that it can't quite decide what to be: A treacly melodrama about the effects of catastrophic illness on a family or a behind-the-scenes look at the world of drug trials and pharmaceutical companies. That second premise would actually be kind of interesting, in the hands of a talented director of procedurals like Steven Soderbergh or Michael Clayton's Tony Gilroy. But Scottish director Tom Vaughan is clearly out of his league.

It doesn't help that his film stars Harrison Ford, comically miscast as Dr. Robert Stonehill, the renegade researcher who has created the drug (we know he's a renegade because he blares classic rock, drives a pickup truck, and shouts a lot). As Stonehill, Ford gives us the full Pacino. The veins on his neck bulge, spittle comes flying from his lips, he hurtles the already notorious catch phrase, "I already work around the clock!".

A puffy looking Brendan Fraser doesn't fare much better as the desperate dad-mostly because he (and the film) gets mired in negotiations and low-impact business meetings. Also, his character is practically a saint—a supportive husband, a devoted father, a tireless crusader for the rare genetic disorder that's killing his kids. He barely even breaks a sweat.

Then [SPOILER ALERT!], in the weirdest twist of all, the family doesn't even end up using Stonehill's drug to save their kids. They use a different drug from the trial. (The perils, I suppose, of making a film based on a true story.) Did they think we wouldn't notice?