AVClub: Late in the weepie cancer story Miss You Already, oil-rig worker Jago (Paddy Considine) comforts his pregnant wife Jess (Drew Barrymore) after a big, painful blowout with her best friend Milly (Toni Collette). “No more drama, all right?” he pleads. “I promise,” she answers, because people in movies are absolutely terrible about making promises they can’t keep. It’s unclear why anyone in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy, a personal emotional conflagration, a sometimes troubled marriage, and a movie like this would think she could get away with swearing off drama. And sure enough, the promise barely lasts out the scene. This is a movie about personal drama. Veering away from it would be like 101 Dalmatians deciding to ditch the dogs 30 minutes into the story.
We Got This Covered
When you enter a movie knowing that incessant sobbing is an inevitability, you hope the tears are worthwhile. It’s easy to make someone cry, but it’s much harder to make them feel each separate droplet. Miss You Already is such a movie that spells crushing depression in the logline alone, and needs to balance misery with tender love in order to successfully tackle its bleak, cancer-battling theme.
EW
Life is almost diabetically sweet for Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette). Best friends since American-born Jess landed at Milly’s London primary school more than 30 years ago—cue the jaunty time-lapse montage!—they’ve seen each other through every formative first (crush, kiss, unexpected pregnancy). Both have cool modern-girl careers— as a sustainable gardener and music publicist—adoring husbands, and the kind of vaguely boho homes shelter-magazine dreams are made of. Then one day Milly goes in for her standard annual checkup and hears four words that send everything sideways: “The lump is malignant.”
Variety: BFFs in London find their near-lifelong bond tested after one of them is diagnosed with breast cancer, occasioning a roller-coaster of emotions, wrong-things-said and reconciliations that, however true some of them may ring, come straight from a well-thumbed weepie playbook. Despite having the integrity to dwell on hospital visits that holiday moviegoers will probably prefer to tune out, “Miss You Already” tests patience with a barrage of peppy pop-tune montages that strain to put an uplifting spin on a grim trajectory. Helmer Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight,” “Thirteen”) brings energy and craft to screenwriter-thesp Morwenna Banks’ maudlin, occasionally shameless script. Still, notwithstanding appealing lead perfs by Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore, the depressing subject matter makes the pic likely to be missed by most moviegoers when Lionsgate/Roadside releases it November 6.
