Mark Reviews Movies: THE UPSIDE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 10, 2019

There are more ways that The Upside could have gone wrong than ways the movie actually does go wrong, so for that, we should be slightly grateful. The movie is an American remake of the 2011 French film The Intouchables, which was warm-hearted and, based on the fact that my recollection of the film ends with that general description, pretty forgettable.

That one was based on Philippe Pozzo di Borgo's autobiography, charting the unlikely relationship between a man who was paralyzed below the neck and the unambitious man hired to be his caretaker—even though he had no experience in such matters. This version is based on the screenplay for the French film, so while the original ended with footage of the actual people behind the story, showing us that real pair remained friends, this one ends with a single-sentence coda, telling us that the two men have remained friends.

That difference may seem slight, but it points to the key distinction between the remake and its forebear. The latter did care about its characters as actual people. Director Neil Burger's adaptation mostly cares about them as a concept. There's no real sense of a bond forming between the two men, because Jon Hartmere's screenplay never looks any deeper than the circumstances of their lives.

It doesn't help that the central performances seem to exist in their own, isolated bubbles. Kevin Hart plays the unambitious Dell, a man who, in this version, is on parole after serving time for unexplained thievery. His parole requirements oblige him to look for work and to obtain signatures from potential employers. That's how he ends up, quite accidentally, with the job of a caretaker for a man with quadriplegia.

The man is Phillip, played by Bryan Cranston as someone who has all but given up on his will to live. After a flash-forward prologue, Phillip's first introduction has him leaving a hospital and scolding his executive assistant Yvonne (Nicole Kidman) for daring to go against his wishes that, if a medical emergency should occur, no extreme measures should be taken to save his life. Phillip, an inordinately wealthy man, spends the rest of the story realizing, with Dell's relatively minimal help, that his life still has meaning, a purpose, and chances for happiness.

Anyone who knows the work of these two actors will also see the potential in the casting of them as unlikely friends. Their styles of performing are about as dissimilar as their characters' backgrounds. The peril, of course, is that the acting styles of the two might be too different.

Without any serious consideration for these characters beyond their respective surfaces on the part of the filmmakers, the second possibility is the one that ends up happening. Hart gives us a toned-down variation of his usual comic exuberance, and a subplot, involving Dell's attempts to reconcile with his ex (played by Aja Naomi King) and son (played by Jahi Di'Allo Winston), allows the actor a chance to drop the joker act entirely. Even so, it's still a role that's founded on providing a stream of jokes, which, if not purely improvised, certainly seem as if they are.

Hart does have some amusing moments here, as his definition of not defining Phillip by his disability amounts to joking in his presence and almost at his new employer's expense (It's OK, though, apparently, because Phillip chuckles). By all other definitions, Dell is terrible at his job (An overlong scene of him working up the nerve to insert a catheter solidifies this, especially since it builds to an even more awkward punch line), but again, the point isn't that these characters understand any specifics about each other. It's just that they can have a good time and learn a few important, generic things about life, love, friendship, and family along the way. Dell even starts to appreciate opera, which is something, one supposes.

Meanwhile, Cranston moves from depressed to reservedly cheerful and back again, all the while seeming as distant from Dell as Cranston's performance is from his co-star's. As written, the character is founded upon and never moves beyond a pair of tragedies—the one that resulted in his paralysis and the death of his wife from cancer, which led to his despair with life. For what he's provided, Cranston is fine, if mostly serving as a chuckling and eye-rolling audience for Hart's jokes. There is at least one scene, in which Phillip meets a letter-writing friend (played by Julianna Margulies), that gives the actor and the character a chance at some depth, in the way Phillip gradually realizes his dinner partner's pity for him.

What we're left with, then, is a movie that understands the basic outlines and through lines of these characters and this relationship. In focusing on broad emotions and even broader jokes, though, it's also one that misses out on the details of both characters and the duo's friendship. The Upside could have been worse, especially in comparison to its predecessor, and the fact that it isn't that bad might be the movie's primary merit.

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