The Upside of Anger
From: The Hollywood Reporter, January 24, 2005
By Kirk Honeycutt
PARK CITY -- Not an easy thing, finding mirth in rage and drunkenness. Yet writer-director Mike Binder's examination of the ups and downs -- mostly downs -- of a wife and mother abandoned by her husband locates genuine humor in her pain.
If Binder had chosen an actress other than Joan Allen to play the angry woman, who knows how "The Upside of Anger" would have turned out. Even Allen must wrestle with this devil of a role -- a woman who is constantly mad or drunk and usually both. But Allen turns the character into a tour de force that unleashes an unexpected comedy about compassion and self-loathing.
The film beautifully pairs Allen and Kevin Costner as two people who find momentarily solace in the bottle and each other. It then surrounds them with the aura of intoxicating femininity in Allen's four beautiful teenage daughters played by Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt and Evan Rachel Wood. When released in March, the New Line comedy could cross over from adult venues into the mainstream to earn solid boxoffice coin.
The story spans three years and is set almost exclusively in the woodsy suburbs of Detroit. Things begin on a note of high drama -- dad's gone and mom's drunk -- and the movie never really climbs down from those stress levels. You must take it on faith that, as youngest daughter Popeye (Wood) says in a voice-over narration, her mom, Terry Wolfmeyer (Allen), was the sweetest, nicest person ever.
When her husband, who has been fooling around with his Swedish secretary and has lost his job, disappears at the same time as the secretary, a dark malignancy of unholy wrath settles in her bowels. The eldest daughter, Hadley (Witt), who blames her mother as much as her dad, can escape the suddenly poisonous household for college. Meanwhile, Andy (Christensen), who wants to be a journalist, and Emily (Russell), who wants to be a dancer so she doesn't see much point in eating, take over the kitchen while mom hits the sauce. In her upstairs room, Popeye puts together a video on her laptop that explores the nature of anger and violence.
Surprisingly, there is one person in whose company Terry regains her equilibrium and sense of normalcy. This is their neighbor, Denny Davies (Costner), an ex-baseball star who is nearly as big a drunk as Terry. Denny makes his living as a radio talk-show deejay along with making paid personal appearances and autographing baseballs.
That Denny insinuates himself so easily into the family and into mom's bedroom is a bit of a stretch. Yet over time the daughters accept his presence. He even gets Andy a job at the station, where his producer (played by Binder himself), a smarmy fellow with a thing for girls half his age, all too willingly takes her under his wing.
Binder ably juggles the twists and turns of the tumultuous relationship between Terry and Denny with plot lines involving all the daughters. Terry is a loose cannon from the opening scene, so the threat of an emotional outburst hovers over most of the film. The movie never lets on whether this is the real Terry -- the one suppressed during her marriage by all that false niceness and sweetness -- or something that happened to her after her husband's betrayal. Nor does Binder see any need to explain Denny's drinking. You feel that if something better came along he might tone it down, and then you realize that Terry might just be that "something better."
The film has a bit of a trick ending that underscores Binder's point about the futility of endless rage yet adds an unfortunate fictional feel to a film that wants you to relate to the commonality of divorce and broken homes.
The actors tune in to their individual characters perfectly, but this is Allen's show. Her raging, desperate housewife is a tigress trapped in a suburban hell, who takes refuge in her primal instincts and lacerating wit.
Tech credits are excellent, especially Richard Greatrex's cinematography, which features moodier lighting than one expects from a comedy. But then "The Upside of Anger" is not quite a comedy.