The Upside ** (2017, Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston, Nicole Kidman) – Movie Review

The Upside is a slightly uneasy and uncomfortable, but not unentertaining comedy drama, with awkward casting and a rough-hewn, sharp-edged script, which gets some laughs and a few tears, but loses out on the truthful feel-good factor.

Bryan Cranston is excellent as a ridiculously wealthy New York City quadriplegic called Phillip Lacasse, who inexplicably hires a talky, cocky unemployed African American man named Dell Scott (Kevin Hart) with a criminal record as his helper.

Though he gleefully turns up for the interviews, he doesn’t want the live-in job of looking after the billionaire. He just wants a signature on his parole officer’s paperwork that he is searching for a job.

He’s the worst candidate for the job! Yet Phillip picks him. That just makes no sense. The script thinks it is an amusing idea so there is no need to explain it. Nicole Kidman’s character, Yvonne Pendleton, looks through her glasses, dazed and confused, as well she might be.

Cranston is an opera lover, Hart likes soul and Aretha Franklin. Who knew she had sung Nessun Dorma (standing in on the Grammies for Pavarotti, apparently?. Ah well, they say music brings us together. Of course, others might say it keeps us apart.

Dell has a wife (Aja Naomi King) and teenage kid (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) whom he has long nelected and who won’t take him back after he has been in jail. Dell nicks some priceless book from Phillip’s collection to give to the kid, who doesn’t want it anyway, and then can’t get it back when he needs to put it back on the shelf. Phillip has a snooty, racist neighbour (Tate Donovan) and eventually, finally, maybe, a new girlfriend (Julianna Margulies) he has started communicating with by letter with telling her about the paraplegia things. These roles are not well written, thin and broad at the same time, giving the actors headaches to play them.

However, the movie kind of works in its Driving Miss Daisy/ Green Book sort of way, though it totally lacks their quality or achievement. The film is fairly entertaining, though manipulative, sentimental and untruthful seeming. I know it is only a movie, but it plays like a Hollywood version of real lives and this story and its character deserve more respect and better writing.

Unfortunately Hart and Cranston seem to be in different, separate movies and they have little rapport as a cinema odd couple. Hart’s film is a fairly broad and showy showcase for this comedian, while his turn in it is a thankfully low-key version of his usual mouthy comedic act, while Cranston’s film is an ensemble drama, with him giving a posh, sincere and quality star turn that is reasonably credible given that is a broadly comedic version of the true story that it is based on.

It is also based on a French movie, which was much better in almost every way. The screenplay by Jon Hartmere is based on the 2011 motion picture Les Intouchables written and directed by Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, adapted from Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s autobiographical tale Le Second Souffle. It starred François Cluzet, Omar Sy and Anne Le Ny.

Kidman’s strict and submissive role is entirely one-dimensional and cardboard, understandably defying this serious actress, who mostly looks like a rabbit in headlights. A comic actress would have been much better – one to play off Hart and get laughs. This, though, would have made the film even more untruthful, but a lot more fun.

The film is dedicated to Aretha Franklin.

It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2017 and was released in the UK on 11 January 2019. In between Kevin Hart has been in the spotlight as a possible Oscar ceremony presenter and as a long-ago texter of homophobic tweets. This will attract attention to the film, but makes his character Dell’s comedic homophobia in handling Phillip’s penis for care reasons very uncomfortable. He can’t even say the word penis. Mmm, really?

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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