There’s something scary about a movie that has Kevin Costner in it these days. With amazing failures such as “The Postman,” “Message in a Bottle,” and “Waterworld,” we can only wonder as to why he still tries.
Then there’s Joan Allen. Most people won’t know her off the top of their heads, but she was the scary CIA woman in “The Bourne Supremacy.”
Add in a couple young women such as the crazy girl in “Swimfan” (Erika Christensen) and Felicity herself (Kerry Russell), and you’ll have a product from the Sundance Film Festival that few people even know exists, called “The Upside of Anger.”
Like so many films that are introduced to the world at Sundance, this movie is a far cry from the monotonous normality that Hollywood has been producing lately – the horror movie streak that gave us “The Ring Two” and “Cursed,” coupled with the cheesy action trend which puked up “The Pacifier” and the upcoming sequel to “XXX.”
Instead of following the norms of high publicity wastes of film – throwing random people in outrageously impossible situations – this one actually focuses on the characters themselves, proving that there was plenty of thought that went into this movie. This film focuses on connections and clashes in personalities, and yet it doesn’t have the boring droll of sappy psychiatric exploits such as “The English Patient.”
What kind of characters are they? The kind that come with drama. In fact, their drama has drama. Yet strangely enough, this movie managed to be absolutely hilarious. And with the rampant alcoholism and constant marijuana use, the film sees plenty of drunk-dialing, hung-over arguments and repetitions of the words “You’re so stoned” – something we can all relate to.
Take Costner’s character Denny Davies for example: He’s a retired professional baseball player who’s completely burned out in a bad radio show and a bottle of vodka. He’s the type of proud failure that would put “Seinfeld’s” George Costanza to shame. Some of his more memorable lines include: “I won’t even talk, I’ll just sit there and I’ll drink with you,” and “I didn’t quite actually have the end of that thought worked out.” It’s like he was made for the part.
Joan Allen plays Terry Wolfmeyer, an angry woman whose alcoholism is unmatched, mostly due to the fact that her husband had just recently left her for his Swedish secretary. Throughout the film, she takes on the scariness and Nazism of the evil stepmother in “Cinderella,” trying to run the world and molding the people around her into her obscure patterns of thought and behavior, neither of which make sense.
Ironically, writer/director Mike Binder has given her four daughters ranging from 16 to 22, all of them Cinderella-like in their own way – trying to grow up and get out of the house as quickly as possible. Each of them manage to rebel against the standards her mother has set for her. This includes going to the wrong college, getting married too soon and dating a radio producer that’s deep in his fifties.
Unfortunately, this film probably won’t have many commercial spots, and it has the look of an old-people romance, the type that folks in college tend to shy away from. Even in the first few minutes, it holds that façade. Yet once the drinks are poured and Costner takes a puff, we see the ugly side of broken, lonely people that we just can’t help but laugh at. This is one movie that’s definitely worth going out of your way for, especially if the constancy of Hollywood’s movie blueprint has gotten weary on your eyes.
Colin Lacy can be reached at [email protected].
