Crazy, Sexy Cancer: TLC
"TLC presents a documentary - which began as a video diary - by and about Kris Carr, a 20-something NYC working actress (as opposed to working waitress/actress) who went to the doctor on Valentine’s Day 2003 because she was feeling lousy. Maybe she hurt herself in her yoga class, she thought. "Maybe," it turned out, wasn’t a downward facing dog injury, but 12 malignant tumors in her liver - caused by an incurable form of cancer…After living on her own for so many years and even earning enough to buy an apartment in NYC, Carr decided to sell it and move back with her parents to concentrate her energies on getting well without chemo…Along the way she meets some fantastic women who are fighting cancer with everything they’ve got - and I’m not talking about the run-of-the-mill group hug groups. And further along the way she even meets her dream man - the one who came in to help her finish the film." - (NEW YORK POST) ""Crazy Sexy Cancer" has the dramatic advantage of feeling unfinished. This isn’t a triumphant tale of staring down death or enduring chemotherapy; Carr’s cancer, though incurable, never reaches that critical stage. While her tumors could spread at any moment, they stay menacingly still over the course of the film, like vultures that haven’t decided to swoop…Carr is a bright screen presence and a natural ham, and her first instinct is to slather her film with sarcasm. She mocks the process of finding a doctor, pokes fun at an alternative medicine convention, demonstrates the Herculean task of preparing a macrobiotic diet. She wisecracks her way through treatments and dances luminously. It’s only midway through the film that the veneer begins to crack, and it’s almost a relief when she finally breaks down." - (BOSTON GLOBE) "Carr knows some will find the title offensive, but the intention is to poke a sharp stick at cancer, to pierce its crippling stigma and tear a strip off its relentless battering of the human spirit." - (VANCOUVER SUN) "It’s easy to empathize with Carr’s ordeal, and a degree of self-indulgence is certainly understandable given the circumstances. That said, the alternating moments of pretentiousness and heavy-handedness are much less easily forgiven…To its credit, this documentary does aim higher than most recent fare on TLC, which, like A&E, has dumbed down and tarted up, rendering its initials meaningless to chase younger demos with such oddities as tattoo artists and little people. Yet while demystifying cancer is a laudable objective, in the final analysis "Crazy Sexy Cancer" lives neither up nor down to its name." - (VARIETY)
Compiled by Sarah Outhwaite