2008 Woodie Awards
Upside To Lackluster Film Is Its Performances
Joan Kubicek
Issue date: 4/7/05 Section: Arts
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"The Upside of Anger" contains large chunks that make not one whit of sense, but you spend the entirety of the movie harboring the hope that, if you just forgo that much-needed bathroom break and wait the sucker out, all the jumbled cinematic pieces and seemingly pointless character introductions will fall into place.
So you hunker down in your seat, wishing to God you hadn't just ingested the Big Gulp cola, and convince your bladder that the filmmakers will make its waterlogged misery worthwhile in the end. And they do, so long as you have the ability to climb aboard the movie's ludicrous premise, drop off your baggage at Dysfunction Junction and ride the Crazy Train all the way to Bewilderville. That's right, folks: this movie holds together only if you switch off any cranial need for logic or cohesiveness and concentrate on the two lead performances of Joan Allen and Kevin Costner, who prove far sexier and more entertaining than the material they're saddled with.
The film opens with the funeral of some as yet undisclosed individual, which immediately puts a damper on the proceedings because we spend the entirety of the picture gauging which character is likeliest to die. Flashback three years earlier and we're introduced to Terry Wolf Meyer (Allen), a woman who finds herself newly single after her husband abandons her for his nubile Swedish secretary. Once sweet as homemade apple pie, she now swills hard liquor, berates her four Pepsodent-ad daughters (Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Erika Christensen and Evan Rachel Wood, in ascending order on the Jailbait Meter), and dallies around with neighbor Denny Davies (Costner), an equally drunken athlete-turned-radio-DJ who sees the husband's disappearance as an opportunity to get into this foxy mama's knickers.
The relationship between the Wolfmeyer family and this genial shlub blossoms within the next few years, as does a tentative understanding between the tightly wound matriarch and her career driven and/or sexually voracious offspring. One marries and pops out a child within a few months of her college graduation. Another rejects higher education altogether and cozies up to Denny's lecherous producer in exchange for a radio career. Still another attempts to seduce her more sensitive male classmates by dropping her doe-eyes and murmuring "I come from a broken home." The fourth, that wild card of the Wolfmeyer clan, is besotted only with the art of ballet, which brings about the severe intestinal distress that lands her in the emergency room and momentarily puts her at the forefront of the Likely Corpse Contender List. Terry's wayward husband, meanwhile, makes no effort to get in touch with his brood, and Denny gradually reveals himself to be the ideal father-figure and mate to replace this philanderer.
So you hunker down in your seat, wishing to God you hadn't just ingested the Big Gulp cola, and convince your bladder that the filmmakers will make its waterlogged misery worthwhile in the end. And they do, so long as you have the ability to climb aboard the movie's ludicrous premise, drop off your baggage at Dysfunction Junction and ride the Crazy Train all the way to Bewilderville. That's right, folks: this movie holds together only if you switch off any cranial need for logic or cohesiveness and concentrate on the two lead performances of Joan Allen and Kevin Costner, who prove far sexier and more entertaining than the material they're saddled with.
The film opens with the funeral of some as yet undisclosed individual, which immediately puts a damper on the proceedings because we spend the entirety of the picture gauging which character is likeliest to die. Flashback three years earlier and we're introduced to Terry Wolf Meyer (Allen), a woman who finds herself newly single after her husband abandons her for his nubile Swedish secretary. Once sweet as homemade apple pie, she now swills hard liquor, berates her four Pepsodent-ad daughters (Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Erika Christensen and Evan Rachel Wood, in ascending order on the Jailbait Meter), and dallies around with neighbor Denny Davies (Costner), an equally drunken athlete-turned-radio-DJ who sees the husband's disappearance as an opportunity to get into this foxy mama's knickers.
The relationship between the Wolfmeyer family and this genial shlub blossoms within the next few years, as does a tentative understanding between the tightly wound matriarch and her career driven and/or sexually voracious offspring. One marries and pops out a child within a few months of her college graduation. Another rejects higher education altogether and cozies up to Denny's lecherous producer in exchange for a radio career. Still another attempts to seduce her more sensitive male classmates by dropping her doe-eyes and murmuring "I come from a broken home." The fourth, that wild card of the Wolfmeyer clan, is besotted only with the art of ballet, which brings about the severe intestinal distress that lands her in the emergency room and momentarily puts her at the forefront of the Likely Corpse Contender List. Terry's wayward husband, meanwhile, makes no effort to get in touch with his brood, and Denny gradually reveals himself to be the ideal father-figure and mate to replace this philanderer.