By Darren Johnson
Campus News and Nu2U
I just saw the Bryan Cranston/Kevin Hart/Nicole Kidman vehicle, “The Upside,” and, while it was a pleasant two hour buddy comedy, it’s really not worth movie-theater prices. This will work fine when you see it on HBO in a few months, in between games of Words With Friends, or during. And while Kevin Hart did up his acting game for this one, and is more than passable, there’s just not enough intrigue here to make this film riveting. I didn’t feel guilty at all leaving for the bathroom or a popcorn refill.
And then there’s Bryan Cranston — he of “Breaking Bad” fame who is fine in whatever he does, but he seems to want to choose boring scripts since his famous role as a meth kingpin. Previously he was blacklisted 1950s screenwriter Trumbo. In this one he plays a quadriplegic Manhattan rich guy. I mean, fine — but his character doesn’t really have anything profound to say. Hart plays an ex-con who becomes his caregiver, and by fixing Cranston’s character’s life he also fixes his own, as he now is able to pay child support for the kid he had abandoned and get him and his mother a decent apartment.
Yawn.
That said, Hart shows enough range and heart in this movie to demonstrate that it’s pathetic that the Oscars canned him as host because of a politically incorrect tweet or two from a decade ago.
Kidman always has screen presence and does a great job.
But, please — will someone give Cranston a gun prop again and a role with an actual plot? The wonder of “Breaking Bad” was that it had action in every single episode, whether realistic or not. It was a great comic book, and Cranston is a great comic actor. He doesn’t need to prove he’s a “real” actor by taking more limited roles. Subtlety doesn’t not necessarily mean art.
This movie was cute, and not uninteresting, but not exciting, either, and the characters weren’t important enough for us to care about them. Perhaps if this movie weren’t based on real, living people we’d get a more honest treatment. Sometimes when real people have to approve a script it gets glossed over. Perhaps a recent example is how the remaining members of Queen had to approve the script for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” undermining that and making the film mediocre. How do you screw up an Eddie Mercury biopic?
A better buddy/caretaker movie never made it to the big screen. It’s the HBO Liberace biopic “Behind the Candelabra,” which had plenty of truth-telling, perhaps because its antagonist has long passed.
Don’t waste your money on “The Upside.” Just wait for it to come to a cable TV channel you subscribe to anyway.
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