Chemistry class
Costner, Joan Allen offer lesson in making sparks fly in 'Upside'
From: The Rocky Mountain News March 18, 2005
by: Robert Denerstein
I haven't always thought much of Kevin Costner's acting, but I'll say this: The man knows how to play baseball-related roles. The Upside of Anger casts him as a retired Detroit Tigers pitcher who has settled into the world of talk radio. The movie gives him a chance to do some of his best work, every bit as winning as his performance in Bull Durham.
Maybe playing against Joan Allen, who puts up a brick wall of resistance for him, freed Costner to relax. There was no way he was going to one-up Allen, so he doesn't try. He uses a second-fiddle status to great advantage, ducking beneath the line of fire, insinuating himself into the movie as a guy whose post-baseball life has unfolded without benefit of a plan.
Costner's Denny Davis has a sense of humor that's endearing even when Denny isn't being too bright, which is a lot of the time. Denny's the kind of guy who's seldom seen around the neighborhood without a beer can in hand. I don't know what it means, but Costner plays this guy to perfection and without a trace of vanity.
The script, by Mike Binder, who wrote HBO's The Mind of the Married Man and also directs here, calls for Costner's character to court his next-door neighbor, an embittered woman (Allen) who believes that her husband has abandoned her for his youthful Swedish secretary.
Allen's Terry Wolfmeyer lives in a comfortable suburban home with her four daughters (Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell and Alicia Witt). To put it succinctly, Terry has become quite a piece of work, a budding alcoholic capable of the most withering sarcasm. If hell has no fury like that of a woman scorned, Allen goes demonic here. Grey Goose vodka has become Terry's companion of choice, as well as a lubricant for her rage.
But Costner's Denny is nothing if not persistent, and he makes every attempt to storm the barricades around Terry's guarded heart in a movie that can be very funny and in which Costner and Allen play a fine - if often flinty - romantic duet.
The very capable Allen has finally been given the kind of showy role that really allows her to shine, and it doesn't hurt that the quartet of young women who play her daughters are equally good.
The daughters give the script some needed dimension. One is about to graduate from college, another has her mind set on becoming a ballet dancer and another takes an offer to go to work as a production assistant at Denny's radio station, where she takes up with Shep (Binder), a seedy, older producer whose intentions are clearly dishonorable.
Terry's youngest daughter (Wood) narrates the story. She's busy trying to seduce her boyfriend, who claims he's gay. She doesn't believe him. She's also making a film about love and anger (a high-school project). This allows her to narrate the movie, which gives Binder the opportunity to drop a few unneeded literary flourishes on us.
But as a writer, Binder gets more right than wrong, and he certainly knows that a comedy needs high points. In pursuit of them, he includes a biting interchange between his character and Terry at a wedding reception.
The Upside of Anger, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, has real crowd-pleasing capacity, and it stands as a strong piece of comic filmmaking, elevated by Allen's acid-laced performance and Costner's shambling charm.
Who'd have guessed? Allen and Costner being terrific in a movie together? But that's the thing about great screen chemistry: It almost always feels like a surprise.