Female friendship is tested in Catherine Hardwicke's amiable, if unlikely, comedy drama scripted by Morwenna Banks. Set in the kind of alternate London we saw in Nancy Meyers’s ‘The Holiday’, it stars Toni Collette as Milly, a spiky rock chick and mother who is diagnosed with breast cancer just as her bohemian, boat-dwelling pal Jess (Drew Barrymore) finally becomes pregnant. That Jess can’t bring herself to share her good news both rings true and adds tension, but most of the film’s pleasures come from Banks’s witty dialogue, ably spat out by the ever-versatile Collette.
Milly’s selfish behaviour is a bold move – at least this cancer sufferer isn’t portrayed as a martyr – but it does undermine the story’s emotional impact: only occasionally does the central relationship feel compellingly close. Still, Barrymore is likeable, as are Paddy Considine and Dominic Cooper as the women’s patient partners. Ultimately ‘Miss You Already’ feels like chick lit for the big screen: a frothy, contrived confection with careful doses of sexy, silly and sad. But those sad bits will get you in the end, goddammit.