UPGRADED - Mark Reviews Movies

Upgraded, Amazon MGM Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 8, 2024

Maybe the expectations are low for what a romantic comedy can or is supposed to do, but Upgraded pretty much meets them. There's a scene here in which our main character celebrates that her boss congratulated her for doing the bare minimum, and yeah, it's kind of tempting to cheer this movie in a similar manner.

That character is Ana (Camila Medes), an intern at one of the art auction houses in New York City, who has dreams of opening a gallery of her own one day. That day likely won't be coming soon, because she is in this job, can only hope and work hard for a promotion, and sleeps on the futon in an apartment rented by her sister and the sister's fiancé. Ana wants it all, but right now, she has nothing—well, except for a master's degree in art history that's not going to pay the bills and almost certainly has created a big one for her.

It's kind of refreshing that the screenplay (written by Christine Lenig, Luke Spencer Roberts, and Justin Matthews) puts Ana in such a realistic situation, instead of that weird cliché of the successful romantic-comedy protagonist who acts as if life is a constant misery or the weirder one of the financially struggling protagonist who can somehow afford a spacious big-city apartment. This is why the little details of a story matter, because we instantly sympathize with Ana's situation and the desperation that will eventually drive the convoluted plot.

That plot is a bit much, if only because it feels as if it would take multiple paragraphs of explanation just to get to the inciting incident. Basically, Ana makes a last-second save at an auction. Her controlling boss Claire (Marisa Tomei) appreciates the catch enough to invite Ana on her work trip to the auction house's London branch, where the intern will be her third assistant. After some business that gets Ana a first-class plane ticket and results in her spilling a drink on a handsome stranger's clothes, she winds up sitting next to the man whose clothes she ruined.

He's William (Archie Renaux), an advertising executive who basically tells Ana his life story on the flight. To keep the conversation and the flirting going, the insecure Ana, smitten with this English charmer, lies about hers, telling William that she's the director of the auction house.

It's all just some innocent stuff, until Ana gets a ride to the hotel from William and his actress mother Cahterine (Lena Olin), who insists this pretty young woman spend some time with her—and, more importantly, her son—while she's in London. Now, Ana has to pretend to have everything, even while juggling all the demands Claire puts on an intern whom the boss sees as nothing.

This is a decent conceit for a romantic comedy, and the movie, directed by Carlson Young, is smart enough to keep Ana's deception in the realm of a naïve, understandable mistake made by a person intelligent enough to know it could be a problem. She has to navigate the realm of the wealthy, privileged, and talented who have everything she wants—such as William and Catherine and her artist friend Julian (Anthony Head), who recently pretended to be dead because he thought it drive ticket sales to a showing—without giving away the reality of her situation.

Those connections get her ahead at work, too, since she can get Claire things, such as tickets to a West End show, the other assistants can't. Everybody's using everybody else here, and when William eventually tells Ana that part of the reason he likes her is because she doesn't do that, it's obvious that something is going to give.

What's the problem with this material, then? It does a good amount right—from how generally believable Ana is as a character, to how sympathetic the basic reason behind her lie is, to how the resulting complications (Catherine, for example, owns the art that's going to be sold at an upcoming auction by the firm) don't really exceed the stakes of the story or feel too contrived (They're inherently so, but that's how these things go). It has a charming Mendes as our lead and an equally charismatic Renaux as the potential romantic partner, while putting the likes of Tomei, Olin, and Thomas Kretschmann (as Ana's boss' boss) to good use.

It's not, though, particularly romantic, which, by definition, defeats the purpose of about half a romantic comedy. That's not because of the deception, since it's not as if Ana is lying about anything other than a job. Even so, the lie is enough to keep a wall up between Ana and William in a way that reduces their connection to some flirtation, a montage of hanging out and kissing, and the inevitable moment when the truth will out.

A love story that's clearly doomed to fail under these specific circumstances can't be especially romantic. Besides, isn't the more intriguing dramatic question raised if William actually knows who Ana is and what she does—and, more to the point, doesn't do—for a living?

If some of the little details succeed here, a couple of the bigger ones simply don't. In other words, Upgraded almost does the bare minimum in giving us a convincing romantic comedy, but on those terms, "almost" doesn't quite cut it.

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