The Assertive Cancer Patient Reviews 'Cancer Movies'

How many times have I gone to a movie, maybe with one of my sons, looking for a little comedic relief from my life with cancer, only to find out that the movie is ABOUT CANCER!

Do I walk out? Suffer through it? Do I send my kid out for popcorn when the main character starts throwing up?

Why, oh why, don’t filmmakers give us some kind of rating or warning? Or at least hint during the preview that someone in this film has cancer? (Pieces of April, for example: the preview is all Katie Holmes wrestling with the most disgusting raw turkey I’ve ever seen—and a broken oven—with not even a hint that the mother she is cooking dinner for is dying of breast cancer. Unfair.)

I’m tired of being emotionally blindsided at the movie theater. That’s why I decided to start reviewing Cancer Movies.

Check here before you rent a video or go out to the theater and see if the story may come a little too close to home. Or, if you are in the mood to watch someone else suffer for a change, at least rent the movie with your eyes wide open.

Read:

Cancer Movies, an Incomplete List

Brian's Song

The Bucket List

Calendar Girls

The Doctor

The Family Stone

Life as a House

Love Story

One True Thing

Out of Time

Pieces of April

Stepmom

Terms of Endearment

Wit

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

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Comments

[laura]

In our family we call these "sneaky cancer weepies." Add "The Family Stone" and "Terms of Endearment" to your list. I swear as a cancer survivor, if I could have two things completely erased from my memory it would be "TErms of Endearment" and David Eggers "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

[Jeanne]

I like that--"sneaky cancer weepies"!

I don't know if I n stand to watch "Terms of Endearment" again to write the review. I hated it when I DIDN'T have cancer.

Jeanne

[Katrina]

The Weatherman. It totally snuck up on me.

[Sara]

Oh, I thought of another one, a fairly innocuous British comedy called Blow Dry. The thing is, it was a cute, unimportant movie and would have been just as cute without the gratuitous hot but apparently inexplicably dying lesbian cancer patient/mother/ex-wife character. The cancer did not somehow magically transform this into a deeply moving testament to anything, it just manipulated the audience's tearducts a little more roughly than it otherwise could have.

[Amorette]

Just found this in the archives when I was gathering material for my own rant on these films. I can't stand them. Here's (part of) what I wrote:

"Same deal with cancer patients. If you find out early on that someone's a cancer patient in a movie, they're just about guaranteed to die by the end. It's the old heartstrings thing...oh, those poor survivors, now they have to forge a new life together. Watch enough of that stuff as a depressed cancer patient and you start to feel like a life-prop; everyone comes along to take a hit off your demise to emerge revived, with a newfound love of life."

Add to this list "1408" (I don't know that they specify the little girl's "terminal illness" as cancer, but it's implied) and "The Gift", in which the little dying leukemia patient creates one poignant situation after another before dropping dead at the first opportune moment.

[Amorette]

One more I forgot- the movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien", which was billed as anything but a cancer-bummer.

Two young men in Mexico, best friends despite socioeconomic differences, collaborate on a trip to a phony beach in order to seduce a gorgeous cousin-by-marriage. To their surprise, she goes along with it quite willingly. There's quite a lot of bedroom stuff, quite a lot of jealousy between the young men.

Throughout it all, there's a steady build of not-quite-right in the woman's life. She comes out of the doctor's office and cries; her husband confesses to adultery and she cries some more.

By the end of the movie, they've found the beach and she's created herself a new life with a nomadic fisherman's family. The men leave her there and go back to their normal lives.

The last scene took place in a coffeehouse where they met to discuss that one cousin they both seduced. "Oh, didn't you hear? She had metastatic cancer and refused treatment. She died."

They wrote her off rather casually as light remorse and the memory of a fantastic sexual experience. I'm sure that's how we'd all love to be remembered.

[Amorette]

Mom and I just watched "Christmas with the Kranks" (which, in my opinion, is one of the DUMBEST movies ever made). Even in the comedies, they have to sneak a cancer patient in for poignancy. I hate that.

This was a neighbor who had cancer for the "3rd time, and we think this might be it". Of course, the woman is a veritable angel, given how close to heaven we assume she is. Never a harsh word out of her, she's the gentle and kind long-suffering victim.

At the end of the movie, Tim Allen's character gives her (and her husband) a pair of coveted cruise tickets. It's the Right Thing to Do, don'tcha know. She's appropriately misty-eyed and grateful for this "last" cruise with her husband.

I don't know. Yes, it was an expensive gift, but I'm a little tired of being fed off of as a self- esteem-building charity case. It wasn't as much about giving her a nice gift as making Tim Allen's character feel good about himself.

Afraid I've gotten a bit cynical on that part. :(

[Tracy]

Totally inappropriate, but when the old woman in No Country Old Men screamed, "I got the cancer!" I laughed my butt off. I used the line for days as an excuse to avoid doing things I didn't want to and to make myself giggle.

[jjeanne]

That's a good one. I watched that movie, and didn't pick up on the line.

I call it, "Playing the cancer card," and I do it. Did when my Older Son's financial aid at the UW wasn't going to cover his needs and the financial aid office wanted me to take out a parent loan ... Teri and I talked about this during the Reunion, so maybe we have a post on this topic as well.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Jeanne

[amy]

I thought Wit was really good. But I saw it before I was involved personally with cancer, so that probably had a lot to do with it. However, it didn't sneak up on you. It was all about cancer, no surprises. One that you probably never heard of is called Six Weeks, a 1982 movie with Dudley Moore and Mary Tyler Moore. DM helps MTM's sick daughter dance in a ballet before she dies of leukemia.

I have a big problem, too, with books that sneak cancer up on you. A Wedding in December kind of did; but worst was the children's book called On Christmas Eve. The jacket said it was about a girl finding the magic of the holiday while helping a friend, so I bought it to cheer up my son while my husband was in the hospital beginning chemo. Thank goodness I read it first; the girl's friend's dad was sick with cancer and dead by Easter.

[jeanne]

Amy--in a KIDS' book? That's outrageous that there was no warning in large letters on the back of the book.

I think I need to start doing cancer reviews of books. A couple of people have asked me about it, and I've been blindsided there myself, since I read so much.

[amy]

Yes, a kid's book, and I'll send it to you if I can find it this year. I didn't want to keep it but was afraid to pass it along in case someone else was blindsided. Reading this thread kind of gave me the willies all over again by the way!