Cast: Juliette Lewis, Diane Keaton, Tom Skerritt, Giovanni Ribisi, Poppy Montgomery, Hector Elizondo
Director: Garry Marshall
Producer: Alexandra Rose
Screenplay: Garry Marshall & Bob Brunner
Cinematography: Dante Spinotti
Music: Rachel Portman
U.S. Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
Watching a well-crafted melodrama can be an uplifting, almost spiritual experience. Watching a bad melodrama can make even the most gullible softie feel like throwing up. While intelligence, sensitivity, and heartfelt emotion are hallmarks of the first, idiocy and crass manipulation define the other. A yawning, unbridgeable chasm separates the two, and The Other Sister falls on the wrong side of that abyss. This is the most painful tearjerker I have endured since Stepmom.
Movies about mentally challenged individuals are always delicate affairs, often straying too far into the realm of preachiness. ("DISABLED INDIVIDUALS ARE REAL PEOPLE TOO!") This is just one trap that The Other Sister falls into. Another is that it relies on stereotypes to define the characters. The script is an ugly pastiche of stock individuals and manufactured conflicts. When it comes to credible, compelling moments, The Other Sister is a vacuum. Unfortunately, it's also unbearably long. At 90 minutes, The Other Sister would have been tedious; at 128 minutes, it's excruciating. Taking a butcher's knife to the negative could only have improved the final results. Whole sequences could have been lopped off without hurting the movie's tone or flow.
The story centers around Carla Tate (Juliette Lewis), the youngest of the three Tate sisters. Each of them has a label. Caroline is the Happily Married One, Heather is the Lesbian, and Carla is Mentally Challenged. Now, after spending her adolescent years at a special institution, Carla has come home. Elizabeth (Diane Keaton), the Mom Who Feels Guilt For Sending Her Child Away, does everything in her power to forge a bond with the daughter who's more like a stranger. And Bradley (Tom Skeritt), the Once-Drunk Dad Who Has Now Found His Way, is content to be supportive. With such a screwed up home life, it's no wonder that Carla wants to strike out on her own. But Mom isn't sure she can cope in the real world, and her doubts are compounded when she discovers that her daughter has a boyfriend: Daniel (Giovanni Ribisi), who's just as "slow" as Carla. Undeterred by Elizabeth's concerns, Carla forges ahead in life by enrolling in the local Bay Area Polytechnic school and preparing to move into her own apartment.
About the only thing The Other Sister has going for it is that it's nicely photographed. As is almost always the case with moderately-budgeted films, everything looks good, and it doesn't hurt that Dante Spinotti is an accomplished cinematographer. Emotionally, however, the movie rings hollow, and the best performance (by a low-key Tom Skeritt) is merely adequate. Diane Keaton is shrill and unconvincing, Juliette Lewis overplays her part in an embarrassing fashion, and Giovani Ribisi fails to leave much of an impression. The characters never become real; I was constantly aware that I was watching actors.
The Other Sister was directed by Garry Marshall, a master of false sentiment and inept comedy who previously foisted Dear God, Exit to Eden, and the inexplicably popular Pretty Woman on audiences. And, while The Other Sister has the dubious virtue of not being as awful as Dear God, discussing their relative merits is like comparing the stench of horse manure to that of cow dung. Marshall also appears to have been hyper aware of the need for a PG-13 rating. The result is a "cutesy" attitude towards sex that is more juvenile than naïve. It's as if the movie was written for a lobotomized audience; even Carla and Daniel (whose favorite film is The Graduate) would be one step ahead of this script.
Anyone interested in seeing a genuinely moving film about the tribulations in a relationship between two people with mental difficulties should check out the 1995 Australian feature Angel Baby. Many of the themes are the same (notably the question of how much independence should be accorded to someone with a diminished mental capacity), but the approach is radically different. Angel Baby opts for brutal honesty instead of facile clichés. That makes it a difficult but rewarding motion picture, and, after viewing it, you'll recognize The Other Sister for exactly what it is: two agonizing hours of lifeless, mind-numbing hogwash.
© 1999 James Berardinelli