TIFF Review: Catherine Hardwicke’s ‘Miss You Already' Starring Toni Collette & Drew Barrymore

On a certain level, one wants to fully embrace a film like "Miss You Already.” Yes, it’s essentially another disease movie-of-the-week, with the film following Milly (Toni Collette) as she deals with the physical and emotional effects of her breast cancer on not only her family—including her husband Kit (Dominic Cooper) and her mother Miranda (Jacqueline Bisset)—but on Jess (Drew Barrymore), with whom she has been inseparable best friends since childhood. But instead of dwelling in the expected misery, Catherine Hardwicke’s film focuses on the bond between the two female friends, and to some degree, their palpable chemistry together drives the film, infusing the weepie material with the kind of warmth and humor that some might consider “life-affirming.”

In this case, though, such high spirits can only do so much to disguise just how generic this film ultimately is. Certainly, "Miss You Already" treads well-worn dramatic territory in its depiction of a woman dealing...