The Upside (2019)

People love The Upside. We love to watch inspirational movies about disabled people finding happiness. It makes us, usually able bodied folks, feel good. And if any disabled people complain that perhaps it would have been nice to give a disabled actor a chance to play a disabled role, we freak out on them. "Acting is playing something you are not!" We scream defiantly. And if another actor said homophobic things in the past and refused to apologize for them, well, his career shouldn't be ruined should it? Poor guy. He's so discriminated against while he's making millions for playing these parts. Even in a movie where he makes us all laugh at having to touch another man's penis. Hilarious. So the moral of this story is let rich guys get all the parts regardless of who it excludes so that we can have our inspiration porn and feel good at the movies.

In all seriousness yes The Upside is predictable (and not just because it's a remake of a French film many of us have already seen) and certainly falls on the safe side of corny. And yes hopefully one day we'll consider wheel chair user actors for wheel chair user parts in the same way we only cast black actors for black parts. And yes Kevin Hart should apologize for his hateful comments in the past before I start laughing at his penis jokes. But despite all that The Upside really isn't as pedestrian as it would appear. It's not great. But it also isn't everything that's wrong with Hollywood.

What it ends up being is simple, pleasant entertainment. Despite all its flaws (which also include cliched writing) The Upside has an upside in that generally its funny and generally its entertaining. And honestly that's all we want from a film right?

Well... perhaps we want to start making them better as well. This is good enough I guess. But shouldn't we want more than good enough?

The Upside
Starring: Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston, Nicole Kidman
Director: Neil Burger
Writer: Jon Hartmere