NEVER judge a cancer weepie by its trailer.
Miss You Already looks like another cancer movie of the week with Best Friends Forever (BFF) Milly (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) going on a road trip, bursting into laughter while dealing with a potentially fatal disease.
It is actually a good thing that the trailer doesn’t give away all the good bits and nuance that occurs between these cliché moments.
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READ NOWLifelong BFFs Milly and Jess have been through thick and thin but life in their 30s is going to get even tougher.
After wife, mother of two and PR workaholic Milly discovers she has breast cancer and needs to undergo chemotherapy, Jess discovers, after years of trying, that she is finally pregnant.
What sets this movie aside from other tearjerkers is the detail it goes into about the treatment for cancer.
Needle-phobes be warned.
Milly goes through physical and emotional turmoil and director Catherine Hardwicke does not shy away from how rough it gets.
Collette captures the heartache perfectly as her character must come to terms with her own self-confidence declining as her physical appearance wanes and ultimately must be altered as part of her treatment.
There are of course the predictable elements (the road trip, strains on relationships, fights and make-ups) but the film is grounded by two great performances by actors who genuinely appear to have been mates since childhood.
THE ESSENTIALS
Miss You Already (M)
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Toni Collette, Dominic Cooper
Four stars
Review by: Julian Wright
In cinemas now