The Upside (2019)
Directed by Neil Burger
Phillip is a wealthy quadriplegic who needs a caretaker to help him with his day-to-day routine in his New York penthouse. He decides to hire Dell, a struggling parolee who's trying to reconnect with his ex and his young son. Despite coming from two different worlds, an unlikely friendship starts to blossom.
8 connections found
View:
8 films that influenced The Upside
What critics say influenced The Upside
The movie’s predictability is a key to its appeal, in much the same way that the jaunty playing-out of racial stereotypes was integral to the appeal of “Green Book,” the most recent example of a movie that rejiggered the “Driving Miss Daisy” formula for a brotherhood-of-man vibe.
In other words, this is the Green Book of disability films, right down to the examination of the relationship barriers between disabled and able-bodied people.
However, this American version (which was wrangled away for distribution by STX Entertainment from The Weinstein Company after it crashed and burned in ignominy last year) is more likely to be compared with a more recent release of dubious racial connotations: Green Book.
Green Book , which tilled similar ground less than three months ago, was practically a primer on what we could expect from The Upside .
Just a few months after Green Book, here comes another story of the friendship between two very different men, one white and one black.
The movie is based on a true story — and lifted from the 2011 French film “Les Intouchables” — but no one really worked on the shaky racial angle for an American audience, one that has seen elements of this in movies such as “Driving Miss Daisy” or “Trading Places” (that last one also has a pottery smashing scene).
If you want to see a film about the unlikely friendship between a wealthy white guy and a streetwise black guy that was filmed in those two same cities, ignore this and watch Trading Places on cable again.
Of course, it’s more directly a remake of the French film The Intouchables , which itself was inspired by a documentary about a wealthy Parisian quadriplegic who hired an unqualified French-Algerian ex-con as his caregiver; the inauthenticity that plagues The Upside could have crept in at any point during that game of telephone (and plenty of people thought The Intouchables was shallow glurge to begin with).
The 2011 French inspirational drama The Intouchables , based loosely on the real-life story of wealthy quadriplegic businessman Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his caregiver, was an international sensation and remains one of the most successful movies of all time in its native country, so the only surprising thing about the new American remake The Upside is that it took so long (there have already been versions made in India and Argentina).
Fans of the original film, 2011/12 French film The Intouchables , will likely take a keen interest in how this remake compares to the original.
In “The Upside,” which is based on the 2011 French hit “The Intouchables,” which was inspired by a true story, Bryan Cranston’s Phillip is a billionaire business genius who was paralyzed from the neck down after a reckless paragliding adventure.
The opening credits for “The Upside” say it was “inspired by” a true story, but its real inspiration is the 2011 Gallic hit “The Intouchables,” one of the most lucrative French films ever made.
For every Oscar-winning film like The Departed (a remake of the 2002 Chinese film Infernal Affairs) there is a badly-executed U.S. version of Oldboy (a remake of the 2003 South Korean film of the same name).
Advertisement
On-screen, The Upside , an American remake of the 2011 Cesar-winning French blockbuster called Les Untouchables , which launched the career Omar Sy ( Jurassic World , X-Men: Days of Future Past ), is iffy but still quite touching.
The star-making performance won Sy a 2012 César Award (the French Oscar) and ultimately landed him lucrative gigs in X-Men: Days of Future Past and Jurassic World.
Time has not exactly been kind to the director’s early films — one remembers when the critical establishment fell on his side back in 2006 when he released The Illusionist in close proximity to Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and how poorly their support aged, given the latter’s rise to cult status — and his work since then, including the Bradley Cooper vehicle Limitless and the first Divergent film, has been soulless and empty.
It’s formulaic, yes, an upbeat spin on a similar situation that was used for tears in the 2016 hit “Me Before You,” where the quadriplegic billionaire kills himself.
“The Upside,” breezily paced by director Neil Burger (“Divergent”), is actually a faithful remake of a 2011 French blockbuster inspired by the two men whose lives were first portrayed in a documentary.
There’s nothing technically remarkable about The Upside which is disappointing considering director Neil Burger’s (Divergent, Limitless, The Illusionist) varied filmography.
This latest film from Neil Burger (of "The Illusionist" and "Divergent" fame) crash lands into a relentless slog that shrugs off any real conflict.
On the downside, director Neil Burger ( Limitless , Divergent ) and writer Jon Hartmere have done little to transform the sappier and more problematic aspects of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano’s box-office hit.
And yet Neil Burger’s (Limitless, Divergent) film already is a Hollywood movie, and with its overblown conflicts and protracted runtime, it’s been scrubbed so clean that there’s no more dirt to fight against.