Another one of Joan Allen’s flurry of good and overlooked films this year. This is more melodramatic than I am usually willing to sit through, but it’s well done. Nothing “stupid” happens in the plot, which I appreciate on one hand. However, I wonder how realistic it is that a mother and four daughters get abandoned by the father and none of them strike out at Kevin Costner, or do anything less than act like a grown-up. The mother is the least stable of the bunch, and that seems unlikely, though certainly possible; and even she deals with the obstacles thrown into her life in a mostly grown-up way (She does drink a lot, but so do I. Who am I to cast stones?)
On an side note, this film was shot at Ealing Studios, which I did’n’t even know still existed.
There was very little evidence of a relationship between the four sisters, except some snarky comments while all are in the kitchen. And even less known about Joan Allan’s character before the start of the movie. We don’t find out much about how she came to be the rather complex person she’s become. But those are minor comlpaints.
This weekend I hope to see A History of Violence and Duma. Nikki – if you are still carting to kids to films, I think Duma might be more likely to agree with everyone than penguin-marching.
Nikki, I say take the kids to see the Cronenberg film. In my experience, nothing prepares them for adulthood and sexuality better than stuff like Rabid. And I think children today lack moral fiber because they haven’t seen enough of scary Ed Harris.
On another note, I’m very, very skeptical about Upside. The writer/director is the hack behind a slew of crap ‘adult’ sex comedies, not the least of which is the abysmal “Mind of the Married Man” from HBO. He is in a tight race for most aggravating writer/director/auteur somehow still finding work in Hollywood, right behind Eric Schaeffer and right ahead of Oliver Stone.
He’s worse than that: he (the writer/director) has a significant role in the film, and looks like Danny Bonaduce. Still, Joan Alan is really good, costner is good too.
I’d like to apply Arnab’s strange rating scale that it would be a good airplane movie. But only on an old DC-3.
the airplane movie rating system is actually frisoli’s. as i recall the worst kind of movie is one you would sleep through on a plane even if it were free.
where is frisoli anyway? has bowling green so completely seduced him?
just saw UofA and found it boring. it didn’t really seem to gel. joan allen is fantastic PERIOD — she’d look fabulous is she were trimming her nose hair — but the movie seemed pretentious without really giving us anything to bite into. the relationship between the mother and the daughters is anaemic, and the fact that “anger” needs to be mentioned and acted so frequently doesn’t speak well for the capacity of the movie to convey an atmosphere on its own. i listened to about 4 mins of extras and it was sad, really, because some guy (i wasn’t watching, just listening — too busy eating italian bacon and flour tortillas: mmmm) was going on about how the movie was too daring for hollywood so they had to find some indie money blah blah blah, and one really felt like saying, “dude, it’s not *that* good ya know?”
mostly, apart from joan allen, we know everyone is stressed because they tell us over and over, hammer us over the head with it. but i don’t think it’s ever clear why everyone’s so stressed. remarkably, the daughters don’t seem to blame the father for having disappeared on them, and joan allen cannot have loved her husband that much because he plays such a small part in her post-departure life (if you were close to someone and they disappeared on you, you’d be giving them, or the memory of them, some direct attention, not some generic, unfocused “anger”).
but i want to say that i really liked kevin costner, which is not something you’ll find me saying often. he seemed really easy in his life-didn’t-turn-out-great-but-it’s-okay, decent-guy role. also, he looked really dashing in all those dark suits. i found him very comfortable and pleasant to watch, and he was very sexy when he danced with one of the girls at the wedding. also, he has my two favorite moments in the film: when he tells the father of the gay kid that he’s a watcher, too, and when he tells joan allen that people do mend, they always do, except they tend to mend funny, have a limp or something. but “we can work with the limp” (this is not an exact quote). i’m a sucker for these sentimental but not too sentimental, wise but not too deep, tender moments.
Thanks Gio, I do not understand the love this film has received. I too was bored or maybe I simply didn’t care about anything that happend in this film.