Extraordinary Measures
Mon, April 19, 2010 
Based on Geeta Anand's book The Cure, Extraordinary Measures is inspired by the true story of John Crowley (played here by Brendan Fraser), whose dogged attempts to find a cure for a neuromuscular disorder known as Pompe were nothing short of heroic. Crowley's interest in Pompe was personal: two of his three young children suffered from the potentially fatal disease.
Extraordinary Measures begins on the day of Megan Crowley's (Meredith Droeger) eighth birthday party. This should be a festive occasion, but her father's red-ringed eyes say otherwise. As the movie explains, most children diagnosed with Pompe don't survive past age nine, and both wheelchair-bound Megan and her ailing younger brother, Patrick, have less than a year to live.
At night, after his wife, Aileen (Keri Russell), and a team of private nurses have put the kids to bed, John pores over stacks of medical research in his study. He keeps coming back to a phone number for Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), a scientist who's been experimenting with enzymes that might hold the key to treating Pompe. Out of desperation, Crowley ditches his flourishing business career in order to devote his energies to funding Stonehill's radical research.
Extraordinary Measures is clearly well intentioned, and the remarkable real-life story will undoubtedly put lumps in the throats of viewers who shed tears over similar movies. But director Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas) seems hell-bent on portraying the Crowley family's struggles in the flattest, most predictable manner. There’s the ridiculous score which up and down through the first half of the movie, not being able to match the tone of the film at all, and crappy dialogue from some of the no-name actors involved like Megan’s “some fighter” says their doctor. What doctors talk like this to the parents of dying children, right after they tell them it would be a “blessing” for her to die and no longer need to suffer.
The performance Keri Russell gave was something straight out of a direct to video or TV movie, which is what CBS really should have done with this. I can almost garuntee that a large portion of the 30 million dollar budget was used to pay Ford’s and probably Fraser’s salaries.
It's up to Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford to save this movie. They almost do, but Frasers acting was very lackluster and really no better than Russell’s. The only person who seemed really ready to show up and prove was Ford, and maybe even Droeger who play little Megan. Ford’s performance as Stonehill was the only thing keeping me interested in this movie long enough to finish watching it. I won’t ruin what happens, but as these movies are, I’m sure you can already guess how it ends.
My rating is 2.5/5 the extra half point being for Harrison Ford’s involvement.
Extraordinary Measures comes to DVD and blu ray May 18 2010.
Reader Comments (8)
This movie was awful, why would you bother to review this???
The movie was boring really, like great story, boring as shit way of telling it
I liked it, it was a bit predictable tho
Mitch, do you plan on doing a review for anything thats actually in theatres now or is coming to theatres soon or is it all dvd reviews?
I did a review for Kick-Ass a couple days before that hit theatres, its a couple below this one. And I'll be doing a review for the Nightmare On Elm Street remake, I should have that up by April 28th.
Thanks for taking an interest Noah.
My gf made me see this, it sucks, Harrison Ford is the man tho, so he made it ok
I seriously doubt they were worried about Fraser's salary. Did you see the mummy 3 haha
Yeah i didn't watch the whole thing though Sly, that movie was terrible.