**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, and Mike Binder
Directed & written by Mike Binder
2005
118 min R
Maybe the problem is mine. I crave movies about the genuine, secret world of girlhood. But then when I see something that purports to be just that, it feels fake.
Everything about the sisters in “The Upside of Anger” is contrived. They’re all beautiful. They lay across each other’s beds and chat. They congregate in the kitchen and have all their meals together. Each has a nicely packaged theme and problem, and outside of that they have no friends or interests. There’s The Dancer (Keri Russell), and mommy doesn’t want her to go to dance school. She develops a cough and we all know what that means. There’s The Reporter (Erika Christensen of “Traffic”), who wants a job instead of college. Then there’s The College One (Alicia Witt) and, well, she’s at college most of the time. Yes, there’s even The Quiet One (Evan Rachel Wood of “13”). They say things like “lame” and “you’re such a mental.” I guess I expected a little too much linguistically from a movie with the word “upside” in its title. I’d say the girls talk like they’re from the WB but then I’d actually have to watch the WB. By the end of the movie there have been so many loaded glances, important nods, and warm laughter between them and their mother. Then they end by sitting in a row and assuming the Strong Women Staring at the Middle Distance pose.
I don’t even know what I mean by fake. Regular visitors to my site should know I’m not a stickler for realism. Maybe writer-director Mike Binder based his idea of girlhood on reading those shiny magazines that are basically giant advertisements for cosmetics. About the only genuine thing about the girls is the narration The Quiet One provides to bookend the movie. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like the narration a 15-year-old would write (ug), and it isn’t exactly necessary either.
Anyway, they aren’t what the movie is about. The movie is really about their mother (Joan Allen, good but a little overly facial), whose husband has just left her without a word. She takes up drinking, being bitter, and turning off that filter which keeps our feet out of our mouths. Under the circumstances, this seems a reasonable thing to do. But she doesn’t know when to stop. Days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years. She’s still making everyone walk on eggshells around her while she “tells it the way it is.” She still wants that special treatment after everyone’s sick of it. Grieving is a lot like a birthday card: we’re not quite sure when to get rid of it.
Unsure whether he wants to court her or just help her through this delicate period is the neighborhood loser, a former baseball star turned radio personality. He’s played by Kevin Costner as a shambling, grinning, slow-talking, pot-smoking dope who’s drunk most of the time. He always seems to be a few pages behind everyone else and not terribly concerned about catching up. Costner the actor has apparently finally given up on being a traditional lead and has decided to work his way through Hollywood’s middle-aged beauties, including Joan Allen and Rene Russo. He is not as washed up as the character he plays in “The Upside of Anger,” but he knows the score, and he’s fun. He talks straight with Allen and they drink a lot. Their scenes are pretty good. They have a bit where they stop traffic to argue. It’s kind of stupid, but he does the best he can.
The family of Pretty White People With Problems is joined by a token ugly person, played by troll-shaped writer-director Mike Binder. He’s Costner’s radio producer and he gives The Reporter a job at his radio station, basically because she looks like Erika Christensen and he wants to hit on her. When confronted by The Mom he makes a pretty good case for why older men want to take out younger women. We actually kind of sympathize with him—that is, until Costner needs a victory to complete his character arc. At which point Binder’s producer turns conveniently into an even bigger scumbag by switching to the worst possible motive for being with The Reporter.
So things are pretty good with the movie’s A couple, until the daughters show up and everyone goes off the handle and starts yelling. Then it all feels so “lame” like it was written by “a total mental.” There’s also the end of the movie, which involves a “Usual Suspects”-style twist. In and of itself, it’s interesting, but after laboring over so much character psychology during the bulk of the movie, the psychic results of this revelation are left disappointingly unexamined. I won’t say anymore, except that the reaction of the family to this revelation is kind of creepy and amazingly selfish, when you think about it. “The Upside of Anger” is a little too concerned with closing off everyone’s circle nicely to notice. If my vagueness sickens you, read this spoiler section.
But my wife had a good time with “The Upside of Anger.” She also thought the narration at the beginning and the end was atrocious but she didn’t mind the girls so much. And I liked that nothing blew up, and no one got machine-gunned, and, if any clergymen had shown up, it would be to discuss marriage and not vaporize demons with buckets of holy water.
Click here to read the spoilers section for “The Upside of Anger.”
Finished Monday, April 11th, 2005
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