Is There Really an Upside to Anger?

I have actually been trying to post, but I think Blogger has been having some problems. Sorry about that. Now on to my review:

It’s not that Upside to Anger (2005) is a bad movie, for it is actually quite good if you consider all of the criteria for a good movie: it features good acting, pretty good dialogue, and a somewhat interesting storyline. It’s just that it’s rather bland.

Yes, that description is bland, but I really don’t know how else to describe it. It should be a good movie, but nothing about it gripped me. It reminded me of one of the Weitz brothers movies (About a Boy, In Good Company), but it wasn’t witty enough to be one of theirs, and it was a bit too implausible, too. Without the wit or realism, where is a comedic drama?

Nowhere, that’s where, and that’s why I have trouble recommending this film. My wife had two responses to it. Afterwards, she said that it was a “good movie.” But during, when the young daughter propositions her “boyfriend” with sex in her bedroom, my wife declared that our own daughter was not allowed to have boys in her room. And that sums the movie up for me. No, it’s not that provocative. No, it didn’t make me ponder any mysteries except some contingencies about strict parenting. In fact, the few things it tried to make me ponder were simply ridiculous.

That same young daughter, for example, enters as the narrator during a few parts of the film, and that’s where the title comes. She says that there is an upside to anger at the beginning, and then at the end she reveals what that upside is, and I just don’t buy it. She says that “the upside to anger is the people who come out of it.” The reason I don’t buy this is I have no idea what it means.

It could mean that people change because of their anger and they’re better people at the tail end. That’s the more plausible explanation. But the mother, the angry one, becomes a bitter wreck and everyone hates her, including all four of her daughters. They claim that she used to be the sweetest, nicest, most loving person on the planet, but I couldn’t help muttering "bitch" throughout the movie, which kept earning askew glances from the wife. So there’s no upside to anger there, at least from what I can see. It could be that she reverts to her sweet self after the film’s resolution, but we don’t get to see that, so I can’t assume it. All we see are the three years when she's just plain mean.

The other meaning to the upside to anger as the people who come out of it is that there is a new person in their lives in the form of the drunk and stoned Kevin Costner. Sure, he’s a nice guy, and everyone loves Fun Bobby, or Fun Costny, but is that really the upside to anger: that it attracts drunken bums? Maybe, but that's doesn't really seem like too much of an upside to me.

I guess I just don’t get it.

Grade for The Upside to Anger: 6