Extraordinary Measures

Harrison Ford produces and stars in this self-admiring, self-important emotionally false TV-movie-style feature based on a true-life story: a father's battle to find a cure for his children's fatal illness. On the poster, with Ford and co-star Brendan Fraser staring toughly out, it's made to look like some sort of macho thriller. I hate to think how many guys are going to go, expecting action and ­excitement. Instead, it's sensitivity all the way with picturesque kids with ­picturesque sicknesses, smiling ­picturesquely in courageous wheelchairs. Brendan Fraser and the supremely ­annoying Keri Russell play the dewy-eyed couple: two of their children have Pompe's disease, a fatal muscular ­disorder. Infuriated by the medical ­establishment's defeatism, Crowley starts his own bio-tech company to get a cure, with the help of a maverick ­scientist, Dr Robert Stonehill, played in full lovable curmudgeon mode by Ford. Fraser's blandness makes for a deeply ­uninteresting fit with Ford's supposedly adorable grumpiness. Very ordinary.