The Upside

Some films try so hard to be warm and fuzzy that they end up leav­ing you feel­ing cold and shiv­ery. The Upside is one of them. This remake of Olivi­er Nakache and Éric Toledano’s 2011 bud­dy com­e­dy The Intouch­ables sees Phillip Lacasse (Bryan Cranston), an art-col­lect­ing bil­lion­aire, left quad­ri­pleg­ic after a paraglid­ing accident.

His glam­orous assis­tant Yvonne (a sur­pris­ing­ly wood­en Nicole Kid­man) is tasked with hir­ing Lacasse a day- to-day assis­tant. The pair end up set­tling for Dell Scott (Kevin Hart), an ex-con­vict strug­gling to make it out of the projects.

It’s clear from the first frame that this is a film strain­ing hard to achieve its aim of being a heart­warm­ing tear­jerk­er, but it nev­er real­ly suc­ceeds. Its leads feel mis­matched due to an obvi­ous lack of chem­istry, while the film moves at such a pedes­tri­an pace that it’s hard to real­ly care about the strug­gles of either. Sure, Hart brings his usu­al over-excit­ed pup­py­dog ener­gy, but bare­ly any of his jokes land and there’s a sense that dra­mat­ic act­ing is per­haps beyond his skillset.

One of the crit­i­cisms lev­elled at The Intouch­ables was that it deliv­ered offen­sive Dri­ving Miss Daisy-esque tropes about race and the idea of the white elite need­ing to be won over by the black work­ing class. Thank­ful­ly, The Upside isn’t as weighed down by such cliché́s, as Hart know­ing­ly jokes about feel­ing like he works on a plan­ta­tion, ridi­cul­ing the ridicu­lous­ness of white wealth.

But even if the sto­ry is more ground­ed in real­i­ty than the French orig­i­nal, the cringe­wor­thy dia­logue (which is packed full of lazy metaphors about Lacasse feel­ing noth­ing, emo­tion­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly) and an unbe­liev­able roman­tic side plot means the film fails to ignite.

By the time the sick­ly, emo­tion­al clo­sure hits, you can almost feel the pres­ence of a stu­dio exec hold­ing up a sign that reads ​‘It’s time to cry now!’ This film is so pre­dictable and run-of-the-mill, the only thing you’ll be doing with your eyes is clos­ing them.