The Upside Of Anger

Written and directed by Mike Binder, who also plays the "deviate" (was this syntactical error intended as a joke?) radio producer, this story of a has-been baseball player (Kevin Costner)r and his relationship with a neighbour (Joan Allen, for whom Binder developed the project) and, in turn, her relationship with her four daughters tackles substantial matters under the rubric of "family drama", but is too glossily mainstream in its treatment of them to have much credibility (symbolic of this in a small but glaring instance, the hole in the boards seen late in the film that supposedly have been broken but clearly have been freshly cut with a jigsaw), at least beyond national borders,

Whilst there are some good lines of dialogue the production values tend to overpower the issues. Thus, despite the fact that Terry has been abandoned by her husband, does not work, and has no visible means of income, there is absolutely no explanation of how she maintains her comfortable middle class lifestyle (which includes multiple sets of school and college fees) for the three year period which the film covers.

Allen gives a winning performance and Costner does quite a good job of playing a burn-out in a role that drolly references his screen speciality, although his interpellation into the Wolfmeyer household is remarkably  seamless, a door-kicking scene notwithstanding, and the part cries out for Jack Nicholson of two decades ago to inject some life into these overly polite proceedings which only tokenistically realize the film's title, the explanation spoken by Rachel Evan Woods at the end failing to bring home what the film has not.

 

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