"Living Proof" is being billed as a new Lifetime movie, but it's really closer to a mega public-service announcement, populated with the caliber of stars that might otherwise be contributing to the "Jerry Lewis Telethon."
In this case it's breast cancer, not muscular dystrophy, that has motivated the likes of Harry Connick Jr., Amanda Bynes, Bernadette Peters, Regina King, Amy Madigan and Angie Harmon to offer their services, and while none of them should be practicing their Emmy speeches, they can feel good about doing some notable charity work. In the end, that's all "Proof" really amounts to.
Connick plays Dennis Slamon, a UCLA doctor who spearheaded research into the drug Herceptin, which would go on to save the lives of thousands of women. His mission requires plenty of sleepless nights, heartbreak, boardroom confrontations, missed family dinners and lots of stoic, intense jogs (Connick logs more miles in two hours than Usain Bolt did during the Beijing Olympics).
It's the kind of material that should be putty in the hands of executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, Oscar winners for "Chicago." But the entire creative team, which includes executive producer Renee Zellweger and director Dan Ireland, consistently chooses mission over melodrama. No opportunity to stop the action and educate the audience is overlooked, which means Connick spends much of his time onscreen dropping statistics and dissecting the evils of a ravaging disease to his assistant, played by Bynes. Time not spent lecturing is dedicated to cliché-ridden dialogue aimed at pulling at the heartstrings with short, fast plucks.
"You're gonna fight your fight until you win," said Slamon's stand-by-your-man wife, played by Paula Cale Lisbe. "That's who you are."
You'll learn a lot about cancer, but not a lot about the characters. That's unfortunate, because there are a lot of rich actresses in the overcrowded cast, any one of whom could have carried a more personal and emotional movie on their own.
At the top of the list would be Jennifer Coolidge, who plays a sassy patient who tries to kill her tumor with brash jokes. I would have been just as riveted tracking the adventures of Nicole, played by Emmy winner Tammy Blanchard, a young mother whose cancer has advanced too far for her to qualify for the miracle drug. (Swoosie Kurtz, as her mother, provides the closest thing to a sniffle scene, when she begs Slamon to break the rules.)
I don't want to be too critical of the contributors or Lifetime, whose previous commitments to breast-cancer awareness have included the superior 2006 movie "Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy."
