{"id":95959,"date":"2019-01-11T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T13:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=95959"},"modified":"2019-01-10T18:17:37","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T02:17:37","slug":"upside-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/upside-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Upside Review: Down with Mediocrity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Upside<\/em> is a pandering mashup of nearly every scrap of emotional shorthand in a cinematic dustbin. Though the effect is not wholly unpleasant, it’s dull, disingenuous, and just as funny as a polite joke from a cashier to pass the time at the checkout counter.
\n<\/p>\n

The Upside<\/em> is an English language adaptation of the popular 2011 French film The Intouchables<\/a><\/em>, which was loosely based on a real-life experience between a caregiver and a patient. As I never saw the original, I cannot comment on what may have been lost in translation between the two films. What I can say is that nothing in The Upside<\/em> is at all unexpected. Every emotion, every plot hiccup, and every character outburst is right on schedule. This makes the entire film feel like being caught in a lame tide pool that was advertised as a whacky, rip-roaring good time. It’s both lame and a shadow of what it could have been. <\/p>\n

The focus of the plot is the relationship between a personal caregiver and a quadriplegic. Phillip (Bryan Cranston) is a blindingly wealthy and kind man who lost his beloved wife and the use of his limbs in a hang-gliding accident years ago. Having lost the will to live, he decides to hire the worst applicant for the job: an ex-con named Dell (Kevin Hart) who wandered into the interview by accident. Though Phillip’s executive, Yvonne (Nicole Kidman), tries her best to get rid of Dell in favor of a qualified candidate, Phillip will not budge. The guy makes him laugh, so he wants to keep him around. <\/p>\n

I could bore you by going through the motions of the plot from that point, but odds are you already know where The Upside<\/em> is going. Had it doubled-down on being a sappy emotional journey, it might have maintained some dignity for both the characters and the source material. If that were the case, I might have forgiven it for its Pretty Woman<\/em>-esque introduction between Dell and opera. Instead, the film insists that it’s somehow a comedy too. While some of the comedy tries to come from physical gags, like the Jacques Tati-inspired incident in an ultra-modern shower, The Upside<\/em> also thinks it’ll get big laughs from getting the very white Yvonne and Phillip to say “Boo” repeatedly. Highlighting how silly it is to see Dell as a fish out of water around rich white folk, or how absurd the modern art market is today, is not comedy. It’s lazy. <\/p>\n

Beyond the torpid writing, it’s a bit astonishing to see a movie with such a simplistic approach to redemption and the value of life. The Upside<\/em> repeatedly takes a pause to sit with a moment, as of to call attention to how profound it is. The script pokes the audience in the ribs to wow you with the fact that a man in a wheelchair could have a sense of humor. Or that a poor black man might be able to appreciate opera. It’s insulting to the characters, and it’s also insulting to the audience. There is no insight or nuance, merely self-congratulatory fluff. <\/p>\n

There may be an audience of people who are satisfied with The Upside<\/em>, and find the story of a paralyzed man discovering beauty in the small things in life both original and inspirational, but I’m not one of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Upside is a pandering mashup of nearly every scrap of emotional shorthand in a cinematic dustbin. Though the effect is not wholly unpleasant, it’s dull, disingenuous, and just as funny as a polite joke from a cashier to pass the time at the checkout counter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":95960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[743],"tags":[3464,5140,6569,1321,489,312,10589],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95959"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95963,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95959\/revisions\/95963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}