Anyone in Hollywood who tries to make a movie about a young girl dying of cancer is on a hiding to nothing if they don’t expect a certain amount of compromise in telling an essentially tragic story.

But director Nick Cassavetes has one thing in his favour, and that is the popularity in America of Jodi Picoult’s controversial bestseller, on which his film is based.

The controversy concerns not the sick Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) but her younger sister Anna (Abigail Breslin), who was conceived by their parents to act as a compatible donor of the blood and bone marrow necessary keep Kate alive.

But when her parents insist she donates a kidney, Anna finally objects and a court case ensues.

Anna loves Kate but wants “medical emancipation”. The case divides the family, with her strong-willed mother (Cameron Diaz) fearing all her well-laid plans will go wrong.

It’s a good story and Cassavetes secures performances, particularly from Breslin and Vassilieva, that do it proud.

But the compromise comes in smoothing out the corners of the drama and providing an ending which, though sad, strives mightily to leave the audience feeling good.

However, instead of looking differently at “perceptions of family love and loyalty and finding a new meaning for the definition of healing”, as the publicity blurb has it, My Sister’s Keeper becomes a well-heeled weepie in which the family’s comfortable existence, despite the misfortunes of fate, is hardly challenged at all.