Nick Cassavetes (TheNotebook) gives competent direction to this weepie of the highest order, and there's an eclectic cast headed by Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, and Little Miss Sunshine, Abigail Breslin. But cheap artifice debases every fine, moving moment.
The film is based on Jodi Picoult's bestselling novel about a child who was conceived as a source of stem cells, bone marrow, and organs for an older sibling ravaged by leukemia. "I was made in a dish to be spare parts," is how 11-year-old Anna (Breslin) describes it.
She doesn't want to give up a kidney (past procedures have taken their toll), so she turns to a showboat attorney (Alec Baldwin) to gain "medical emancipation." You'd think Cassavetes would showcase Breslin and Diaz (as her mom), but Patric as the compassionate father and Sofia Vassilieva as the stricken older sister make Keeper something to hold onto.
