The Upside of Anger Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)April 2nd, 2005
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Mike Binder's frustrating The Upside of Anger has moments when it connects, and others where it just flails madly about, begging to be put out of its misery. Binder, best known as the creative force behind HBO's short-lived The Mind of a Married Man (he wrote or directed 18 of the comedy's 20 episodes), crafts what can only be described as American Beauty Lite (and Carb Free!), giving his own character the best lines yet failing to tell us why our narrator earned the nickname Popeye.
Though the opening shot dredges up memories of Moonlight Mile, Binder gets right down to the Beautyisms quickly, giving his story of darkly dysfunctional suburban adults and their rebellious teenage children, a voiceover and promising that one of them will be dead before the closing credits roll. The narration, from Evan Rachel Wood (thirteen), explains how the matriarch of the Wolfmeyer clan used to be nice, but recently turned into a bitch. "How?" you might ask. "Wait for the flashback," I tell you.
Turns out three years earlier, Terry Wolfmeyer's (Joan Allen, Off the Map) husband ran off with his Swedish secretary, leaving her to wallow in a giant home in suburban Detroit with four teenage daughters, who might be the best looking big screen offspring since The Virgin Suicides. Terry hits the sauce, earning a drinking buddy in the form of goofy neighbor Denny Davies (Kevin Costner, Open Range), a former big leaguer with the Tigers who now hosts a local radio show during which he refuses to discuss the National Pastime.
The kids don't make Terry's life any easier, either. One (Alicia Witt, Two Weeks Notice) keeps her boyfriend, her engagement, and her pregnancy a secret; another (Keri Russell, Felicity) is a dancer who doesn't want to go to a traditional college. A third (Erika Christensen, The Perfect Score) flat out refuses to attend any college, and finds love in a less than ideal form, and the youngest chases a gay loner when she isn't narrating or being called by that mysterious nickname. That voiceover, by the way, totally vanishes until the very end of Act III, which represents both sloppy filmmaking, and a particularly ferocious cinematic pet peeve of mine. Proceed with extreme caution.
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