The Upside Of Anger (DVD)

...spiral of drink and depression. The only bright spot for her is her husband’s best friend and fellow drunk Denny. A former baseball legend, he becomes a shoulder to cry on for Terry and a father figure to her daughters. But life becomes more complicated when their feelings for each other deepen.

Had I known that “The Upside of Anger” was written and directed by the same man as the misjudged “Reign Over Me”, I would probably have avoided ...
...It’s hardly surprising it’s taken the best part of two years to get a release over here. It’s a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Binder tries to tie character study, romantic comedy and family drama together without really understanding any of the genres well enough. He doesn’t have the lightness of touch required for the romantic comedy aspects, allowing jokes to hang around too long. Nor does he have the required empathy with his characters ... more

When Terry’s husband disappears, she’s left to deal with not one but four headstrong daughters. She falls into a downward spiral of drink and depression. The only bright spot for her is her husband’s best friend and fellow drunk Denny. A former baseball legend, he becomes a shoulder to cry on for Terry and a father figure to her daughters. But life becomes more complicated when their feelings for each other deepen.

Had I known that “The Upside of Anger” was written and directed by the same man as the misjudged “Reign Over Me”, I would probably have avoided it. Writer-director Mike Binder’s filmmaking is some of the most woefully leaden I have come across. It’s hardly surprising it’s taken the best part of two years to get a release over here. It’s a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Binder tries to tie character study, romantic comedy and family drama together without really understanding any of the genres well enough. He doesn’t have the lightness of touch required for the romantic comedy aspects, allowing jokes to hang around too long. Nor does he have the required empathy with his characters to make the family drama work. His direction is heavy-handed and melodramatic making this potentially enjoyable chick flick a male perspective on hysterical women that blow every little thing out of proportion, thus alienating his core audience.

Visually, this is a very dull little film that never rises above the cheap-looking grainy film stock or the faceless environments it is set in. The pacing throughout is uneven; just as we are getting to know the characters, Binder decides to move on with clunky changing season motifs. But this undermines the coherence of the narrative, seemingly linking together a series of unrelated incidents. They don’t show how the characters are growing or changing as people, more that they are stalled and emotionally stunted. The film is overlong; there simply isn’t enough incident or detail to fill a hundred and eighteen minutes, so you’ll probably find yourself checking your watch every five minutes.

Binder’s screenplay is an exercise in stodgy, derivative writing. The problem is that he is prone to cliché and sentimentality and lacks the lightness of touch required to make comic moments really sing. The central premise of a family of women left to fend for themselves after they are deserted by their father figure has the potential for touching chick flick moments. The lead character’s battle with her emotions and the bottle could give rise to a character study on the nature of bereavement and addiction. But instead we are subjected to a soapy exposition and sketchy character development. The various twists (marriage, pregnancy, falling for a gay guy, eating disorders, illness and getting involved with your boss) are predictable and feel like they could have been stolen from any soap opera. There doesn’t appear to be any real point to the story – the final twist is a melodramatic cliché, for which we do not see the emotional fallout. And adding insult to injury, the film is closed out by a nauseating homily that underlines the clumsy central message about how we have to learn to let go of the past and move on with our lives.

One of the major issues is that we, like the characters are only allowed to live in the aftermath. We never meet the missing dad nor see what life was like before he flew the coop, so we have no idea what the family is missing. In a narrative sense, Terry has too many daughters. There is an excess of central characters, which makes the focus too diffuse. Most of the girls are demoted to plot devices and their storylines are never satisfactorily explored or concluded. Therefore they lack depth and never feel fully formed. But then again Terry is a one-note ball of bitterness, Denny is a standard movie lush and his best mate Shep is an excuse for writer-director Binder to create a part for himself that enables him to perv over much younger women. The dialogue is riddled with expletives and little conversations in which the participants refuse to concede any points to the other party. It’s like a master-class in stubbornness and irritation and if all else fails, there’s another reference to drinking.

As Terry, Joan Allen gets all of her mid-life frustrations out as the tightly-wound drunk. However, she’s a singularly unlikeable character because she is cold, brittle, vicious, angry, humourless and terminally tense. There’s nothing for the audience to cling to and you can’t help but feel Terry has brought everything on herself through her intractability. So you may even despise her. You understand she’s going through a kind of bereavement and she’s pushing everyone away so she doesn’t get hurt again. But this makes her very difficult to empathise with. It is an effective performance from Allen, but it occasionally feels like she’s labouring her character’s drunkenness. At least she has some chemistry with co-star Costner.

As former baseball player and full-time drunk Denny, it looks like Kevin Costner has finally (thankfully) given up on playing heroic types. However, his performance is rather superficial – relying heavily on the paunch and shambling gait to carry the part. He has a modicum of chemistry with his female co-star and does a decent line in paternal bumbling.

Of the women playing Terry’s daughters, both Erika Christensen and Keri Russell are too old for their roles. It’s obvious just looking at them that neither is fresh out of high school. But the real problem for all of these actresses is that their characters are defined by their problems. As eldest daughter Hadley, Alicia Witt is over-sensitive. As Emily, Keri Russell is an anorexic dancer with a chip on her shoulder, while Erika Christensen is defined more by her perfect teeth and buxom figure as the independent Andy. Rising star Evan Rachel Wood doesn’t get a chance to shine as the youngest sister, Popeye (whose peculiar nickname is never explained). The role doesn’t have a personality so much as an enormous collection of hats that are a poor attempt at distraction from the lack of depth.

Alexandre Desplat’s original score is the most accomplished aspect of the film. He’s one of those composers that can do anything from chamber music to modern pop styles. Here he mainly settles for the kind of playful arrangements you are most likely to hear in 1950s romantic comedies. There are tootling woodwinds, twinkling chimes and playful strings and brass motifs with syncopated harp melodies. He branches out into more complex suites that arise from sad piano melodies with rising strings and chimes. There are further serious string arrangements to reflect darkening moods and even a touch of strident harpsichord. Admittedly it doesn’t fit with some of the other soundtrack choices like Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” or Urge Overkill’s “Girl (You’ll be a Woman Soon)”, but it attains internal consistency at least.

“The Upside of Anger” is a film that consistently misjudges its target audience. Writer-director Binder fluffs his chances at nailing the chick flick market through lack of detail. The characterisation is sketchy, the romance fumbled, the comedy leaden and the storylines hackneyed. The cast do what they can with the limited script, but fighting against poor writing and indifferent direction, there is little they can do to bring this above the level of stereotypical soap opera. Unless you fancy a dull, stolidly paced family dramedy that will leave a sour taste in your mouth, I’d avoid. 

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