No matter how compelling – and heartwarming – the true story of the Crowley family is, it’s hard to watch “Extraordinary Measures” without thinking “Lifetime.”
The disease of the week genre didn’t start on the network for women, but it set up camp there all the same.
“Measures,” which tells how John Crowley risked everything to find a cure for his children’s fatal disease, can’t help but mimic some of the genre’s bullet points.
But the tension between the two leads – Brendan Fraser and an irascible Harrison Ford – provide enough texture to distance the film from TV-style trappings.
And there’s no Meredith Baxter Birney in sight.
Fraser plays John Crowley, a hard-working family man trying to save the lives of two of this three children. They suffer from Pompe Disease, a debilitating condition which typically means reaching the age of 10 is all but impossible.
The Crowley’s have tried every treatment within reach, but when John hears about a researcher tackling the disease from a fresh perspective he decides to reach out to him.
Dr. Stonehill (Ford) thinks he can unlock the puzzle behind Pompe Disease but lacks the funding to do it. So John quits his job and dedicates himself to creating a company to fund the doctor’s research.
Easier said than done, especially since Dr. Stonehill is a crank of the first order and the jobless John suddenly don’t have a support system for the rest of his family.
“Measures,” based on a true story but told with some Hollywood deck shuffling, is the kind of film one would be hard pressed to hate. The same goes to Fraser, whose genial presence gives his John Crowley the necessary decency to relate to his controversial decisions.
That inherent threatens to overwhelm the story.
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That’s where Ford comes in. The actor has been mostly leaden in recent roles, often because the material around him has been so sub-standard.
If the actor had one wish it might be to wipe “Hollywood Homicide” off his resume.
Here, Ford gives Dr. Stonehill a crackling edge. He’s crusty and stubborn but with a heart buried beneath layers of cynicism.
John’s battles with Dr. Stonehill elevate the movie beyond its obvious story arc.
The film finds a new conflict every 15 minutes, but director Tom Vaughn (“What Happens in Vegas”) stages each flare up so as to keep us engage, not obviously pull our strings.
Courtney B. Vance gets too little screen time as a parent who also has two children with the condition. Other roles which seem clipped include Alan Ruck as a co-worker and Dee Wallace Stone as a sympathetic barmaid.
“Extraordinary Measures” can’t compare to the real Crowleys’ tale, but as feel-good cinema it hits most of the right marks.
(Photo: Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser star in “Extraordinary Measures,” a new film from CBS Films.)
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Of course the movie is always somewhat different with the true story in some way but the gist and the essence is the same. The story of the “The Crowley Family Journey of Strength, Hope, and Joy” who went through extraordinary measures to help save their children from pompe disease.