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Critics Consensus: Preachy, manipulative, and frustratingly clichéd, The Upside showcases Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart's chemistry without ever taking full advantage of it.
Critic Consensus: Preachy, manipulative, and frustratingly clichéd, The Upside showcases Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart's chemistry without ever taking full advantage of it.
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All Critics (162) | Top Critics (34) | Fresh (65) | Rotten (97)
The most optimistic answer would be that after decades of overuse we're beginning to grow weary of such racist caricatures. Let's hope that's true.
For the most part, [Hart] is more subdued than usual and aiming to hit deeper notes - call it Hart-felt.
It's a struggle to find the bright side to this rather hackneyed film.
Forced to work strictly from the neck up, Cranston is just the right amount of gruff; Hart, aside from a deeply unnecessary catheter scene, gives a gratifyingly prickly and vulnerable performance.
The Upside works for many of the same reasons that The Intouchables worked but, like any echo, it's neither as loud nor as powerful.
Compared with the streamlined Intouchables, the remake feels ungainly, inexpertly suturing together the French source material with Hollywood formula.
I can't exactly recommend you take a chance with this one. Why? Well, because you have seen it all before, and probably done better.
The Upside delivers pretty much what it says on the box - a solid buddy movie laced with equal parts drama and comedy.
The Upside is two hours of feel-good cinema that you'll probably forget about as soon as you leave the theatre and get hit by reality again, but it's worth the watch.
The Upside has all the elements of a heartwarming film and sometimes arranges them in compelling ways, but the film overall lacks warmth for its characters or passion for its plot.
The laughs were in far more abundance than I anticipated, and all of that fun came alongside a story that moved me with honest performances.
This is a movie filled with a painfully obvious story and manufactured mawkish moments. It's doesn't just pluck our heartstrings, it thrashes a power cord
Mid-budget star vehicles are often said to be things of the past or off-season novelties. The Upside is the latter, released in January, banking on the star power of its leads and wisely avoiding confrontation with, letâ(TM)s be honest, better movies. The Upside is a loose remake of the 2011 French modern classic The Intouchables. The plot centers on an ex-con struggling to find work who finds himself in the employ of a reclusive billionaire paraplegic as his caretaker. Both learn to overcome their personal dilemmas through their partnership and eventual friendship, as you would expect for this kind of fare. Iâ(TM)m told this movie is more saccharine and conventional than The Intouchables was. What I can confirm is that itâ(TM)s fairly predictable. What does work about The Upside is the comedic chemistry between Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. Both give bravura performances that overcome the melodrama and some of the best scenes involve them bullshitting, listening to music and arguing over it, or just driving around. Nicole Kidman plays âthe straight manâ? and has a few surprises as the story nears the end. It lacks the depth that would allow it to stay in your memory a month later, but itâ(TM)s a decent middle of the road story with a couple of laughs. The Upside is a pretty okay rental or streaming option that you can put in the background while you do chores or have sex.
Super Reviewer
Charming is the key word here. You will be charmed. The Upside is charming. Charmed in the sense not that The Upside will put you under a spell necessarily, but more in the sense of it being a pure pleasure; a delight, if you will. Many a foreign films are re-tooled into American stories so as to make the context more familiar and the circumstances more relatable/understandable, but oddly enough the 2011 French film, The Intouchables, might be the last foreign film to come to mind when considering what would benefit from a re-contextualization as it, by virtue of its broad and rather simple odd-couple premise, feels the least foreign in terms of beats and emotions relayed. Still, for one reason or another it was deemed a big enough hit overseas and therefore must have been doing enough right to make a stateside studio want to re-make it once more (it has already been re-made in India as well as having a Spanish-language re-make to boot) and so why not hire the likes of Walter White and the most reliable comic actor of the moment to bring it to a wider, English-speaking audience? Thus, The Upside was born and first premiered on the festival circuit back in the fall of 2017, but was shelved and sold off following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations. Eventually bought by STX Entertainment, the studio is either hoping people overlook the time of year in which they are dumping this into theaters and simply trust the inspired pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart or they are just trying to unload what is sure to make some money, but what they ultimately realize was always an unnecessary piece of cinema. And yet, unnecessary as it may be, the inspired pairing of Cranston and Hart is what makes director Neil Burger's (Limitless, The Illusionist) re-make of the film a film with genuine heart and even a little insightful substance from time to time rather than that of a film completely devoid of any charm or wit that exists solely as an opportunity to replicate a previous winning formula. The Upside is certainly formula and it goes without saying any seasoned movie-goer will know to expect every beat this hits, but that doesn't mean it's neither appealing nor endearing as it strokes its familiar elements to the point it is these charming qualities that stand out most. read the whole review at www.reviewsfromabed.com
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