Raising Funds and Awareness
John (Brendan Fraser) and Aileen Crowley (Kerri Russell) are happily married with three children and for John a good career. But there is a large shadow over the Crowley household as their youngest two both have Pompe disease, a genetic disorder which is likely to kill them before the age of ten. When his daughter Megan (Meredith Droeger) almost dies it leads to John quitting his job and tracking down researcher Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford) to help raise the funds needed to complete his research. But with Stonehill being abrupt, cantankerous and a pain to work with whilst John is desperate for a cure sooner rather than later the two of them are going to have to find a way to get on.
"Extraordinary Measures" is a conflicted movie as with Harrison Ford on board it is clearly a big screen movie but it is actually a small screen, made for TV movie. What I mean with a storyline with its roots in a true story about a medical situation and a couples desperate need to find a cure this is something which works best on the small screen rather than the big screen and unfortunately throwing some big name actors at it as well as some better production values does not make it work as a big screen movie.
Anyway as to the movie itself, well it is one of those moving stories about a father's desperate need to do something to save his daughter. Of course it is not easy as we see John clash with the curmudgeonly Stonehill who is doing his research for his reasons rather than John's. It is all typical stuff and beyond Harrison Ford the only difference between this and the made for TV equivalent is production as this has superior production values afforded by time and money to capitalize on such things as the way the light falls through a hospital's atrium during an emotional scene.
Now Harrison Ford is in many ways well cast to play a curmudgeonly researcher but whilst he pulls off the obnoxious side of the character perfectly Ford actually struggles in the other areas of the movie especially when it comes to the more sentimental and emotional side of the movie. In fact Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell who have both appeared in a variety of TV projects do a much better job of handling the movies emotional and sentimental sides.
What this all boils down to is whilst "Extraordinary Measures" is well worth watching but it is very much a made for TV story masquerading as a big screen movie with a big screen star and doesn't quite work. But as a fan of made for TV movies it was right up my street.
