Extraordinary Measures

IMDb Link

First 'uh oh' happens immediately: CBS films. WTF?
Second 'uh oh,' a second later: 'Inspired by true events.'

Inspired. Not based. Sorry, but isn't almost every film inspired by true events? Love, break-ups, gangsters, westerns. I guess everything except for sci-fi could be seen as inspired by real events.
A family has a sick child. Bang! There's a film!
I ate too much tuna. Bang! There's a film in there! "Toxic Tuna!"
I stubbed my toe. Literally: bang! Another film! "Revenge of the killer bed!"

Anyhoo... I love it when Hollywood condenses everything so that audiences can understand it all and not get bored.
Afternoon: the kid's 8th birthday party.
Evening: The dad reads 9 years is the max a kid with a certain disease can live.
Morning: Kid's in hospital, dying.

Of course the fact that she's a very sick kid is not enough, we gotta love her a whole bunch, so we see her 'bowl,' we see her playing around with her brother, she talks about penguins. She's a fighter, she loves life so so much.
Awww... so cute. Because an 8-year-old dying isn't enough to inspire compassion into the cold hearts of  audiences anymore. For that to happen, you need overly-dramatic talentless vampires or blue extra-terrestrians.

You even got the cold-hearted business men who don't care about mortality. They're wearing suits and they're so so mean! But fear not, the good guys are there! They stand up, shake things up, cue the swelling violins! All people in the audience weep.

Of course if the atrocious disease with muscle degradation and impending doom is not enough, you always have the kind of music that would make Kevorkian weep. And then you have weepy families introducing their sick children. If you don't have tears in your eyes, you're a robot. You are going to cry, yes you are. Cry.
Cry, dammit! CRY! We'll even have a kid dying off-screen to have some quality on-screen hugs!

Yes... This film REALLY wants you to cry. REALLY. The only other way it could get worse would be if the doctor said: "Your daughter's a fighter, but um... it seems she got the plague. And we had to cut her arms off."
And then the mother would get on her knees, raise her hands to the sky (à la Platoon) and go: "Nooooooo!"
Not a dry eye in the audience.

And of course, Ford is an absent-minded genius, but a true pickup-driving American. He's from the heartland. And he's got heart. Coz he's an American, don't you know. Watching football, listening to American tunes, wearing jeans, fishing, drinking Bud, and eating American food. Fuck, yeah! I'm surprised they don't have a scene with him karaoking to John Mellencamp. And... 'I don't care about money, I'm a scientist!' Oh, and his name's Bob.

I think Ford suffers the same disease as Cage (except that the former still got hair): they stopped acting, they just play themselves. Don't get me wrong, I like them both, but with every new film they star in that I watch, I ask myself why I like them.

As a great American film, they of course have to keep it light-hearted, by adding 'jokes,' and light moments. Which I'm sure people found hilarious. I mean, show a dying kid. Then make a bad pun and the need for tension breaking is so great that you'll laugh yourself silly.

That, by the way, is my theory behind Czech 'humor,' but that's for another day.

What I'm saying is: if you don't know where this film is going, or if you find it sad at any moment, you are not quite a genius and you probably think that 'Twilight' is awesome and that 'Avatar' is totally cool.
And you probably like Kesha, you dumb fuck.

That was out of line, I'm sorry.
No, I'm not.

PS: Scientists can't spell 'refrigerator?'
PPS: Jared Harris rules. I'm sad he's in this film. But glad he's in films.
PPS: We're supposed to believe that the anorexic Russell had THREE kids? I think not. Or she's one mega MILF.

Oh, ooops, out of line again.