Review of Miss You Already (2015) by Kyle B — 07 Nov 2015

A sweet but tough movie to get through with a lot of joyful comedic moments but some really hard dramatic moments dealing with cancer and how it affects everyone around you. Toni Colette is one of our most undervalued actresses working today so it was awesome to see her get a buddy dramady like this because she is the queen of dramadies with her masterclass work on United States of Tara to back me up on that title.

She shows all of her strengths here with delightful and witty comedic timing to really emotional heavy breakdowns over the thoughts of death. Drew Barrymore holds her own here but she just isn't the strongest actress in the world in general though this is one of her strongest performances at least in the past decade or so.

Dominic Cooper was quite charming as well giving one of his best performances to date as he is often wasted in bad action movies. I didn't realize it when I was watching the movie but the actress who plays Colette's mom in the movie was really wonderful and I couldn't wrap my brain around who it was playing her but it indeed was the great Jacqueline Bisset.

She is a delight in this movie as well as a great cameo from Francis De La Tour. This was a real return to form for director Catherine Hardwicke who I was questioning where she had disappeared to after watching her great movie Thirteen earlier this year which actually led me to this movie looking at what she had coming up.

Yes she went the wrong direction in her career with Twilight and Red Riding Hood but this is definitely a step in the right direction back to being a must see director. The movie doesn't add much new to the storytelling process of a cancer movie (except maybe being an extra 30 min too long) but Colette makes even the most cliche plot points worth your viewing.

Those cliches include the always featured "this is so hard for me I can't take it anymore" emotional breakdown from the spouse to the lack of sexual interest between the two and leading to an affair.

Those all really could have been cut for time to make this a bit tighter and less by the books. Hardwicke also return to her obsession with feeling the need to show us audience members every inch of a needle that goes into a character's skin rather then doing us all the favor and either backing the camera up or not showing it at all.

In the end, this is a really good buddy movie even if it has a lot of somber moments but it is one of those power of friendship movies that will keep this movie alive on home rental for years to come.