Philadelphia. 1969. British physician, Dr. Audrey Evans, is newly recruited to a world-renowned children’s hospital and battles sexism, medical conventions, and the subterfuge of her peers to develop revolutionary treatments, purchase the first Ronald McDonald House for families of patients and, ultimately, impact the lives of millions of children around the world. Based on a true story.
Cinematically honoring an individual for determined, heroic accomplishments is certainly an inspiring and noble reason for making a movie. But, to do justice to the story, the elements need to be engaging, entertaining and compellingly told, which is where this fact-based offering from director Ami Canaan Mann comes up short. The film presents the little-known, fact-based story of Dr. Audrey Evans (Natalie Dormer), a transplanted English pediatric oncologist who took over this practice area at the prestigious Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 1969. At the time, she proposed the implementation of new treatment strategies for youngsters afflicted by childhood cancer, a radical departure from the standard care in use at the time, which was quite ineffectual as evidenced by its 10% survival rate. She also spearheaded efforts to caring for the considerable financial and daily living needs of the families of these young patients, many of whom were saddled with significant logistical burdens on top of attending to the welfare of their children. Evans often faced an uphill battle from skeptics and naysayers in her quest to put these initiatives into practice, given the departures they represented from established procedures. However, her relentlessly aggressive and persuasive capacity for getting the attention of benefactors and peers, like Drs. Dan D’Angio (Jimmi Simpson), C. Everett Koop (Clancy Brown) and Brian Faust (Brandon Michael Hall), as well as her boundlessly kind compassion for those under her care, ultimately transformed the hospital’s cancer treatment program, a model since adopted elsewhere that has raised the successful cure rate to approximately 80%. In addition, her efforts to address the needs of patient families led to the establishment of the first Ronald McDonald House, a program that has subsequently spread globally. To be sure, these are indeed praiseworthy achievements. However, the picture’s account of Audrey’s efforts is somewhat pedestrian, shallow and meandering, following a rote narrative formula that’s predictably on cue and comes across like a virtual replay of events previously depicted much more effectively in director Penny Marshall’s endearing, often-underrated release “Awakenings” (1990). There’s also precious little attention paid to capturing the mood of the era in this period piece biography, a quality that feels noticeably underdeveloped. To its credit, the film features a fine performance from Dormer and the ensemble of supporting players, but this is far from enough to save the picture from its innate mediocrity and keeping it from being a fitting tribute to the remarkably dedicated work of its protagonist. Dr. Evans courageously demonstrated that her children deserved better than what they were getting, but, unfortunately, the same can’t be said here in the telling of Audrey’s truly laudable story.