My Daughter Must Live (2014) Joelle Carter, Madeleine Martin, Paul Popowich, Sergio Di Zio, Kyle Mac, Rachel Wilson Movie Review

My Daughter Must Live (2014)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Joelle Carter in My Daughter Must Live (2014)

You Liver or You Die

When Ragen O'Malley's (Joelle Carter) daughter, Katie (Madeleine Martin), is suddenly diagnosed with a life threatening condition it hits the family hard, especially when it is decided that Katie will need a Liver transplant. It is when neither Ragen or her husband, Hugh (Paul Popowich - One Starry Christmas), comes back as a suitable match that Ragen is forced to think back 16 years and track down Dan (Sergio Di Zio - Angels and Ornaments), the man she had a one night stand with at a school reunion. But not only will Ragen's secret threaten her marriage but in her need to find Dan it could put her life at risk as Dan has led a chequered past.

Here is the movie I wanted "My Daughter Must Live" to be; a daughter is taken ill and when the parents go in to be tested to see which one could donate an organ they discover daddy isn't the real daddy. Cue lots of emotional conflict not only between husband and wife but also mother and daughter as everyone deals with this earth shattering news that the daughter has another daddy somewhere and mummy wasn't always faithful. In truth I may have watched that movie already as I watch a lot of made for TV movies and most kind of merge in to the blur of forgettable distractions suitable for a rainy afternoon.

But what you get in "My Daughter Must Live" is a movie which uses that set up as jumping off point for a whole other story. That story is the one which sees Ragen not only having to deal with the secret but then discovering Dan, the guy who is her daughter's biological father now goes by a different name and there are people after him. It is far fetched and the sort of nonsense which people expect from TV movies, and often mock them for. There is also a subplot about Katie becoming friends with another patient who has cancer and together get up to some hijinks. But all of this is really quite weak as well as typical and is why the likes of Sergio Di Zio and Joelle Carter struggle to make their characters believable or that likeable.

What this all boils down to is that "My Daughter Must Live" isn't a bad movie when you take in to account that it is made for TV but it is the sort of movie which a few days after watching you will be struggling to remember the details of the story or who was in it.


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