"You wanna die and you know that I won't let you" Kate (Swank) has the perfect life. She is a classical pianist with a loving husband. One day she notices something strange happening to her, when she is diagnosed with ALS her life is changed. After burning through caregivers she hires Bec (Rossum). This simple hire does more for both of them than they could have imagined. This is simply a great movie. I had trouble trying to figure out why Hilary Swank didn't get nominated for this. That aside the movie is tremendously emotional and full of heart. The movie will make you angry, happy and cry, sometimes at the same time. Rossum also does a fantastic job in this. This is not a movie that makes you feel sorry for Kate, even though you do. This movie gives hope and happiness to not only those suffering from the disease but also the care givers to those helping. I can not say enough about this and I recommend this. Overall, a great movie that Swank should have gotten more recognition for. Watch this. I give it an A-.
Plot summary
Kate is a classical pianist just diagnosed with ALS. Bec is a brash college student and would-be rock singer who can barely keep her wildly chaotic affairs, romantic and otherwise, together. Yet, when Bec takes a job assisting Kate, just as Kate's marriage to Evan hits the skids, both women come to rely on what becomes an unconventional, sometimes confrontational and fiercely honest bond. As meticulous, willful Kate begins to rub off on whirlwind, spontaneous Bec - and vice versa - both women find themselves facing down regrets, exploring new territory and expanding their ideas of who they want to be.
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The movie will make you angry, happy & cry, sometimes at the same time. Swank should have gotten more recognition for this.
funny, touching, and a tear jerker
Kate Parker (Hilary Swank) is 35 with the perfect husband Evan (Josh Duhamel) and the perfect life. Her life is turned upside down by ALS. One and a half years later, she needs full-time help. She fires her nurse for treating her as a patient and hires Bec Cartwell (Emmy Rossum). Bec's life is a mess. Her best friend is Jill. Wil (Jason Ritter) has a crush on her but she's banging her married professor Liam (Julian McMahon). She's an aspiring singer with stage fright. Kate doesn't fit with her old friends Keely (Ali Larter) and Alyssa (Andrea Savage) anymore. She befriends John (Ernie Hudson) and his wife Marilyn (Loretta Devine) who also has ALS.
The first most surprising thing is that Emmy Rossum is funny in this. She's doing Fiona from Shameless and she's good at it. Hilary Swank does her best impression of ALS. Once the comedy gets going, the heart can open up. The stage is set for the tear ducts to flow. I also like that Evan is a character with a couple of levels and Kate has a complicated dueling reaction. Bec's many personal problems are a little too broad. The film piles on her problems too thick. In the end, this is an unabashed tear-jerker and one must submit to the manipulations. Also the title is horrible. I get the meaning but it sounds like a bad self-help chant without knowing the story behind it. A better self-help phrase would be "Someone who sees me". At least, that sounds better.
Falling under
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.