SFF Selections 2014: "Lies I Told My Little Sister"

Lies I Told My Little Sister * ½

      Imagine Tracy Lett's Pulitzer-prize winning August, Osage County as produced by the "Lifetime" network. Imagine Violet Weston's cancer being over-sentimentalized with sap lines like, "Anything could happen to anybody at any moment...", "She wasn't cast iron, no one's cast iron!", and the classic, "Every heart has its graveyard." Imagine Violet and Barbara's wrestling match taking place in the sand at a beach (looking like the actresses were in fear of harming one another) and ending in one straddling the other as they giggle. Imagine a romance cropping up mid-way to ultimately provide the story's emotional climax and conclusive resolution after grief, family reconciliation, and personal growth had been established as the plot's core themes. Imagine all these things and you will have a pretty clear picture of what sitting through Lies I Told My Little Sister is like.

     Showing no interest in it whatsoever, Cory is the world's least likely nature photographer (she actually has dialogue explaining how she's never stopped to look at the stars). After the death of her older sister Sarah (over-played by All My Children-star Alicia Minshew in exactly the kind of cancer-patient-performance that only a soap-actor could give), Cory pulls further away from her anal-retentive control-freak of a little sister (to her son: "Let Mommy clean the spare change.") and her "Om"-chanting free-spirit of a mother before being guilted into a family vacation to where she grew up in Cape Cod. The stage set, pathetic humor-based family dis-function and spiritual healing can abound. Made like a casserole (throw in a little of everything and see what happens), Lies I Told My Little Sister is about as profound as a Hallmark Card and as deep as a bowl of Chicken Soup For The Soul. The moral: if one's sister dies of cancer, get a cat and get a boyfriend (yes, both) and then everything will just be ok.