(spoilers)  For a movie with a schlock quotient this high (Julia Roberts teaching step daughter to be cool, Susan Sarandon dancing wildly to Marvin Gaye in pajamas with her two children), this movie nonetheless achieves a breathtaking and memorable level of honesty, in a few, very few, but amazingly poignant scenes.  To wit -- the scene where Ed Harris brings the dying Susan Sarandon a christmas tree, long after they have separated.  The scene which Julia Roberts confronts Susan Sarandon with some evidence of her duplicity and challenges her to obtain the truth:  "Are you dying/" and Susan Sarandon  looks her straight in the eye and says "Not today."  Those two words have become a kind of personal mantra for my husband and me, and in my estimation, this mere chickflick has approached the epitome of unsentimental veracity, for a few moments only, but what moments! --These few scenes rescue the movie from the heap of  terminal illness schlock.  I almost hate to admit it, but based on these few scenes alone this movie ranks with my top ten all time . . . . (and I admit I am a sucker for nearly anything with Ed Harris in it.)