Extraordinary Measures: How to Save a Life

I’ll be honest, the only reason I originally wanted to see Extraordinary Measures was because of my undying girl crush on Keri Russell. We have been besties ever since she starred in Felicity, created by my soul-mate J.J Abrams. I knew a tiny bit about what Measures was about: a family with children who have terminal diseases and one father’s fight to do anything to save them with the help of an eccentric doctor. Sure to be tears, sure to have that triumphant feeling at the end as any good PG movie marketed as hopeful, and as feel-good as The Blind Side. I didn’t expect to like this movie aside from catching some face time with my girl Keri, but I did. I really did.

The skeleton of the plot is basically what you would expect from the trailers and the fact that it promises warm fuzzy feelings. What I wasn’t expecting was to get as invested as I did with the characters and the story. What you might not gather from the previews is that Keri and her husband (surprisingly well-played by Brendan Fraser) have three children, and two of them have Pompe disease, which is a rare genetic disease that disables the heart and muscles, and is often fatal in young children. The movie does a wonderful job of making the Crowley’s seem like a real family, without making them into a Lifetime Original Movie family. The family’s love and anxiety about living with two death sentences is never melodramatic, and their daughter, Megan (Meredith Droeger), whose ailing health motivates the father to find treatment for this disease, is so endearing that I was reaching for the tissues more than I expected in this one. Fraser hits a wall early in the film, and is so desperate to find a treatment for his children that he takes an impromptu trip to Nebraska to meet with leading scientist in the field of Pompe disease, Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), to try and get him to apply his theories to actual patients. Crowley and Stonehill’s passion for this cause seem to be motivated by different factors, but they land in a somewhat dysfunctional, and often entertaining, stride. Watching the process of trying to bring theory to trial and trial to treatment is frustrating and relatable to outside of the medical field (no one likes red tape).

But what I like most about this film is how it deals with Mr. Crowley’s clouded objectivity. He gets so involved with the process of finding a treatment for Pompe, that many of the other scientists and backers for the research question his ability to make rational decisions, when his success in the endeavor is a matter of life and death for his children. The passion that Fraser is able to bring across the screen is so powerful, and the children portraying patients with Pompe reminds viewers that this story is based on real events. The boldness of the project in the film and the passion and idealism of the characters reminded me how extraordinary real people actually are. Ford and Fraser’s performances drove it home.

I know this is starting to feel a little Oprah-esque, but I liked the feeling I had leaving the theatre. It didn’t feel cheap and it didn’t feel forced; it was genuinely uplifting that people’s compassion and determination can have a lasting and meaningful effect on lives.  Now my objectivity is becoming clouded here, since I know someone (with a few degrees of separation) with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy who is fighting for his life. One of my college classmates made a documentary with a bunch of his friends from high school about their friend Darius Weems, who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Their film, Darius Goes West, follows them on a road trip across the country to try and get Darius’s wheelchair custom made on MTV’s Pimp My Ride. I learned a lot about the disease from the movie, but I also learned what an extraordinary impact normal people can have on lives when they care enough. If you want to check out the film and learn more about how you can help, please visit: http://www.dariusgoeswest.org/.

While it might seem (and feel) shameless to plug a DVD made by a friend in a review for a different movie (bottom line, see Extraordinary Measures), you never know who can be part of a solution much bigger than themselves until given the opportunity. Idealistic? Sure. Getting too sappy for a pop culture website? Granted. But actions, even shameless ones, measure our character, and I bet the all the real Crowley families out there would approve.