Military Movies - Military Times

Feeble ‘Measures’

Many movies try to do too much out of abject fear that if they stop pumping out head-splitting levels of sensory stimuli for even a second, they’ll lose the audience.

“Extraordinary Measures,” billed as “inspired by” true events recounted in Geeta Anand’s book “The Cure,” has a rarer problem:

It doesn’t have enough to do.

To be sure, the story of an ordinary couple fighting very long odds to find a cure for a rare and serious genetic illness that afflicts two of their three kids is earnest and well-meaning.

It’s also thin, gooey and obvious in a TV-movie way, down to the song that plays over the closing credits: “Change the World,” the most syrupy three minutes of pap Eric Clapton has ever written.

John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is a working-class Joe who put himself through Harvard Business School and is now a marketing executive.

He and his wife Aileen (Keri Russell) are despairing for their two younger children, 9-year-old Megan (Meredith Droeger) and 7-year-old Patrick (Diego Velazquez), who both suffer from Pompe disease.

Pompe, we are told, results from a genetic defect in which the body fails to make an enzyme that breaks down certain sugars, which then build up in muscles and lead to paralysis and death.

The Crowleys’ last hope is Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), a biochemist at the University of Nebraska with a theory for a promising new therapy that will negate the effects of Pompe.

But he has no money for clinical trials. (He wryly notes that the budget for his entire department is smaller than the salary of the school’s football coach.)

John abandons his job with a plan to use his marketing skills to raise money to push forward with the research.

He first persuades Stonehill to leave the school and strike out on his own with funding from some weasely venture capitalists. When they pull the plug, John allows their little startup to be absorbed by a much larger, but just as weasely, pharmaceutical research firm that is also working on potential cures for Pompe.

The scant friction derives from John and Stonehill clashing with their corporate patrons and eventually with each other, mixed with scenes of the Crowleys and their children that alternate between overwrought and treacly.

No question, Pompe is a devastating illness, particularly because it so often strikes very young kids. But the fact is, its victims become increasingly inert as the illness worsens — which doesn’t provide for a lot of dramatic possibilities. The most the film can do on that score is to have one of the Crowley kids grow too weak to toss bread crumbs to a gaggle of geese.

It hardly helps that none of the three lead actors can give their characters any appreciable depth.

Fraser is likable enough, but there’s a reason his résumé is stuffed with fluff such as “Dudley Do-Right,” “George of the Jungle,” “Monkeybone,” “The Mummy,” “Encino Man” … you get the idea.

Russell seems equally likable, but let’s be real: Her claim to fame remains her (admittedly riveting) portrayal of a thick, sexy head of curls on the defunct TV show “Felicity.”

Even Ford strains mightily, and mostly in vain, to breathe life into the story. But his Stonehill comes off as a big ball of quirky, foul-tempered, grating irascibility.

“Extraordinary Measures” is the first feature project from CBS Films — yes, that CBS — which explains why it feels like a Hallmark Hall of Fame special.

It’s not terribly made, its heart is in the right place, but I cannot see forking out $10 for it.

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Rated PG for thematic material and mild language. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@militarytimes.com.