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Lest anyone assume that I didn't like the performances in "The Upside of Anger" before I go on to trash the story,
please rest assured that I do admire all of the performances in this movie.
Kevin Costner is always at his best when he plays an understated role. Here he is almost doing a reprieve of his role
in "Bull Durham," as he is once again playing an aging athlete well past his prime who lives off his past glories.
It is my opinion that Costner does best in these smaller movies in which he plays less a heroic figure and more one with tragic
flaws.
Joan Allen is a superb actress, one of the very best that we have today. She plays a warm and natural earth mother in
the film, "Off the Map," but here she plays a housewife wallowing in anger and bitterness after her husband has
apparently deserted her and run off to Sweden with his Swedish secretary with whom he was having an affair.
Terry Wolfmeyer (Allen) then makes all the wrong choices in her bout with many bottles of Gray Goose Vodka (an obvious
commercial placement) and an anger that is so corrosive that she drives her daughters away from her in spite of her rarely
offered but desperately needed words of support to them. When Denny Davies (Costner) fumbles around and offers the chance
for a drinking buddy and then casual sex, Terry, who initially considers him to be beneath her consideration, eventually falls
into a relationship with him based on the two things that they have in common, a need for sex and alcohol.
Everyone in this movie offers an exceptional performance. It's a shame that their roles are far superior to the material
that has been given to them.
The eldest daughter, Hadley Wolfmeyer, is played by Alicia Witt, who earlier starred in the 2002 movie, "Two Weeks'
Notice," with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. Long before this she played Cybill Shepherd's sassy and streetwise daughter,
Zoey, in the television sitcom, "Cybill."
The second daughter, Emily Wolfmeyer, is played with anorexic longing by ballet dancer wannabe Keri Russell, who has starred
as Felicity in the television sitcom of the same name.
The third daughter, Andrea ("Andy"), is played with relish by Erika Christensen, who uses her figure to full
advantage. She had a minor role as the drugged out daughter in the weak 2002 film, "The Banger Sisters," but she
had earlier rocketed to prominence as the ill fated daughter succumbing to heroin addiction in "Traffic," the very
fine 2000 film about the illegal drug trade.
The youngest Wolfmeyer daughter, Lavender, who for some unexplained reason everyone calls "Popeye," is played
by Evan Rachel Wood who is famous for her earlier tour de force role as (again) another drug addict in the movie, "Thirteen."
She plays the resident philosopher and author in this film and much of the narration and even the title of the movie are derived
from her musings about the current emotional condition of the members of her family.
Suffice it to say that the roles in this movie are played exquisitely well, almost to perfection. But that is not enough.
There has to be a story that provides the proper foundation that allows these performers to come to life. There has to be
a believable structure in their lives, even if their lives are unbelievable and without structure.
The movie lacks this proper narrative foundation, and the blame for this falls on Mike Binder, who is the writer and the
director of this movie. Furthermore, he also plays a starring role in the film as that of Adam "Shep" Goodman, the
producer of Denny Davies' afternoon prime time radio show. Goodman happens to be a serial sexual predator who preys on girls
half his age and he later becomes the far too old lover of Andy, the one voluptuous Wolfmeyer daughter.
I went into "The Upside of Anger" with the thought that this movie would be the far superior of the two Joan
Allen movies currently in theatrical release, the other being the recently reviewed film, "Off the Map."
I was wrong. Whereas "Off the Map" is long and occasionally boring, at least it is a beautifully done film with
a heart and a soul. The young girl in that movie has more native intelligence and sophistication than all of the women in
"The Upside of Anger" put together in spite of being brought up in the wilderness of New Mexico and being home schooled.
I know that she will turn out all right in spite of the devastation that her father wreaks on the family with his bout
of severe depression. On the other hand, as far as the women in the Wolfmeyer family go, it seems to me that they will be
living on emotional crutches for the rest of their lives.
The most that "The Upside of Anger" can aspire to is to present another bleak picture of the inhabitants of
a wealthy suburban enclave near Detroit who have everything that they need except for the most valuable commodity of all,
common sense. I might also add that there is not much evidence of a moral foundation of any kind in this family which has
been given so many material gifts. Rampant alcoholism, casual sex resulting in an unwanted pregnancy and drug usage by adult
and children alike show that none of them have been taught how to live a sensible or emotionally rewarding life.
The many lapses in judgment and the almost total lack of common sense in these people is just astonishing. In many ways
they are incredibly stupid people.
To begin with, Terry Wolfmeyer seems more like a mother out of the Fifties than one of the new Millennium. She is hard
and unbending, as well as being emotionally brittle when life blindsides her. With these faults, she takes our initial sympathy
at the wrong that has befallen her and turns it into disappointment at the kind of person she is, for she is a genuinely unlikable
person who cruelly mistreats her daughters.
When her second oldest daughter, Emily, tells her that she has been accepted at a Detroit school for ballet, her mother
rains all over her parade by not only not congratulating her for her acceptance, but then dismissing the acceptance as it
wasn't from a "real college." She reminds Emily that all of her daughters will go to a "real" college.
My gosh, if I had had a daughter who had been accepted at a school for ballet, I would have been thrilled.
Later Andy also rebels by declining her mother's demand that she also go to college. She wants to be a producer, and Denny,
who happens to have been at the dinner when this confrontation comes up, offers her an apprenticeship under his long time
producer, Shep Goodman.
Now, Denny knows that Shep is a predator of girls half his age, but he throws the voluptuous teenaged daughter of his
"drinking buddy" and sexual partner into this wolf's den anyway. (I guess that laws forbidding sexual contact between
a boss and a subordinate, especially one barely of the age of majority, don't exist in this parallel universe.)
Denny also has another screw or two loose. He has had a long time radio gig in prime time only because of the fact that
he had been a much loved former star baseball player for the Detroit Tigers. The problem is that he refuses to talk about
baseball, at least on his radio show. He shuts off every caller who telephones in and wants him to talk about his former career.
His refusal to talk about his baseball career is at odds with his garage and living room, both of which are filled to
the ceiling with signed baseballs which he peddles to fans at his paid appearances in shopping malls and at sports stores.
He refers to his signed baseballs as his investments, like they are his pension plan, but he doesn't want to leverage the
value of this pension by talking about it in his radio gig. And this is on a sports radio station and a show that is broadcast
during the prime time noon hour.
Now, I am not a sports nut, but I have never seen or heard of a star athlete who has walked away from his career while
at the same time leveraging and deleveraging his status as a sports icon. This doesn't make any sense at all and Davies needs
to sit down and have a talk with his schizophrenic self.
Back to Terry Wolfmeyer, who is able to live at the same secure financial station in life without any support from her
husband who has disappeared. While she later teams up with Denny to sell the vacant acreage behind their houses, it would
appear from the line of the story that the money from this sale wouldn't come in until more than a year or so after her husband
has left. In any event, this income will be, as she requests of Denny, put in trust for her daughters. What does she have
to live on in the meantime?
She refuses to call him in Sweden even though she twice picks up the telephone and dials the number. She always hangs
up before anyone speaks. I don't know about the rest of the world, but if I did that I am positive that either my wife or
my son or my wife's new lawyer would want to have a little chat with me to ascertain what the heck was going on and what I
was going to do about deserting my family. Divorce or no, abandonment creates a host of problems that have to be addressed.
Her four daughters desperately need her to make contact with him to allow them to sort out their issues with their father,
but she cannot make the effort, even in the instance of a later tragedy striking the family. Her lack of courage in this situation
turns out to have tragic consequences.
Finally, "The Upside of Anger" takes a critical and shocking turn of events late in the movie. I can't discuss
what happens in any detail without giving away a critical element of the story, but once this development occurs, the effect
that it ought to have on the Wolfmeyer family is only minimally discussed.
I find this incomprehensible given that all of their dirty laundry earlier in the movie is beat to death by discussion.
The event leaves me without any emotional closure other than serving as a convenient plot point that was placed in the movie
only to serve as an end to the story. In essence, every other emotional trauma is revealed and discussed, but the most potent
trauma of all is just thrown "out there" without being adequately covered by the family members, all of whom ought
to have been devastated by this strange turn of events.
Go figure. This movie is a sad waste of its considerable acting talent.
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