The Upside of Anger

by Shari L. Rosenblum

There's something infuriating about The Upside of Anger . I think it's the whiny, selfish, privileged folks drenched in alcohol and self-pity. Or the film's conceit that they resemble us. Written and directed by Mike Binder (The Mind of the Married Man ), it revels in its characters' well-deserved self-loathing (Roger Ebert says he liked them because what could be said about them could also be said about him and his friends, making me glad he never invites me to his parties). It then condescendingly purports to teach us something from their mistakes.

It does have its upside, though. The acting. Joan Allen plays the termagant Terri Wolfmeyer, consumed with fury at her disappearing husband, as a veritable human maelstrom. Left alone with her four darling daughters—the girls' roles written as dramedy stereotypes each setting up for a “listen timmy” moral coda—and fueled with spirits, she spits venom and barks bitterness and bores into social niceties with the smooth, cutting curves of a corkscrew. Her neck muscles tense into steel chords and visibly transform the slender roundness of her lithe figure into a series of sharp edges. She is persuasively despicable, and one never wonders why a man who lived with her might have happily moved to Sweden with his secretary just to get away (as she suspects the father of her children has done). But Allen is also able to convincingly imbue the hard-shelled Terri with a soft creamy center—or perhaps more aptly, a maraschino cherry—if only the right man would bite in.

Cue Kevin Costner as Denny Davies, retired Detroit Tiger next door with a flailing radio show and a thing for Miss Thang, which makes it clear from the outset that he must be a drinker. Lo and behold he sees romantic potential where more sober men might have found only barbed wire and vitriol, and the pseudo-comic courtship is on. Costner is at his best here: human and endearing with dimensions that hint of the real world so absent from the rest of the screenplay. And not just because he's mastered so well the aging ballplayer on the rebound. He's really good. He slouches with disappointment and straightens with hope, matching Terri's corrosiveness with his own brand of compassion and burrowing into the female enclave of Terri's home with both tenderness and tenacity. (The film trips up here in that the Wolfmeyer residence is portrayed as testosterone-free from the very beginning, despite the very recent departure of the man of the house.)

Denny's appeal is highlighted by his difference from Terri, but it is put into relief by comparison with the oleaginous, cradle-robbing lech who produces his show, Shep, played by Binder himself with trademark smarm. (Shep was the name of my childhood family dog; it seemed remarkably appropriate here). Binder's screenplay infers a likability from this detestable swine, and plays him for a humor that just is not there—it seems grounded in a past millennium. He gets one soliloquy (okay, it's not really a soliloquy—he's facing off against Terri—but it is meant to reveal his inner self) in which he gives voice to the middle-aged baby-chaser's rationalizations. He delivers it well enough to make the bile rise to one's throat; I'm just not sure that was the intent. The film seems to believe this is a moment of truth; which makes it all the more pitiful.

We get to know very little about the missing husband and father as the film progresses—though he does have our sympathies. Terri never misses him, though she sometimes angrily tries to dial the number she has—and her daughters never blame her for his leaving. They seem hardly troubled by events, except at moments when they want a manly audience (graduation, a dance recital).

They are not an admirable lot. Blonde and beautiful, they are played without stretch by actresses in prefabricated personae—each reminiscent of something else the performers have done. Alicia Witt ( Two Weeks Notice) , the eldest, embodies the spoiled brat with a sense of entitlement, petulant beyond the age of petulance and taking off on a new life bound for the same discontentment her mother exhibits: not yet there, she's a shrew in the making. Erika Christensen ( Swimfan, The Banger Sisters) is pouty and sensual, a deceptively innocent man-manipulator. Keri Russell ( Felicity) is the ethereal sister (a fact the film uses to misdirect us midway through); all she wants to do is dance. Slimy sex, light drugs, and abundant alcohol are rampant in the house, but dance is apparently more than attentive mother Terri can take: she puts her foot down. Evan Rachel Wood, at turns precociously wayward, at turns sensitive and insightful, is little more than a mix between the characters she inhabited in t.v.'s Once and Again and cinema's Thirteen. In this work the critics are calling “adult,” this child has the last word.

The Upside of Anger ends with an ironic jolt that it's been hinting at all along (though it's more obvious in retrospect). A superficial resolution, practically speaking, it is handled with fictional carelessness. It has no impact beyond the “gotcha” of the mediocre writer, and the crystallization of the clan's hatefulness. Coming full circle, playing endings as beginnings, the film caps its arrogance with a final, supercilious voice-over, and drains the last ounce of good will from its tortured audience, now eager to leave the theater and drown themselves in obliterating drink.

©2005 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene