The Upside of Anger
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMike Binder
Written byMike Binder
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyRichard Greatrex
Edited by
  • Steve Edwards
  • Robin Sales
Music by
Production
company
Distributed byNew Line Cinema
Release dates
  • January 23, 2005 (2005-01-23) (Sundance)
  • March 11, 2005 (2005-03-11) (United States)
Running time
117 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12 million[1]
Box office$28.2 million[1]

The Upside of Anger is a 2005 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Mike Binder and starring Joan Allen, Kevin Costner and Evan Rachel Wood. The film was produced by Jack Binder, Alex Gartner and Sammy Lee, received mostly positive reviews with praise for Allen and Costner's performances, and was also a moderate box office success grossing $28.2 million from a $12 million budget.

Plot

Beginning in medias res, the opening scene presents Terry Wolfmeyer and her four daughters, with a friend, Denny Davies, attending a funeral.

The film flashes back to three years earlier, when a heavily intoxicated Terry announces to her daughters Hadley, Andy, Emily and Popeye that their father, Grey, has left the family to be with his secretary in Sweden.

Terry continues to drink heavily to cope with her anger and pain, which causes her daughters to resent her. She later shares the news about her husband with her neighbor Denny, a retired baseball player turned radio talk show host and fellow heavy drinker. They progressively grow closer, and eventually begin an intimate relationship.

Keen to help where he can, Denny helps Andy to become a production assistant at the radio station where he works. There she meets Shep, Denny's producer who is a questionable character in his 40s; Andy and Shep begin a relationship which disgusts and angers Terry.

Meanwhile Popeye, a high school student, pursues a romance with her classmate Gorden, but he reveals to her that he's gay. They instead become close friends, bonding over their respective broken homes.

Terry clashes with Emily, who wants to pursue a career as a professional ballet dancer and rejects her mother's desire for her to go to a traditional university. Emily ultimately relents and starts classes at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but is soon hospitalized for complications from an eating disorder. She returns home to recover and, after a night at the ballet with the entire family, Terry appears to accept Emily's desire to pursue dance. Meanwhile, Andy does well at her radio station job and soon outgrows her relationship with Shep.

Hadley graduates from college and immediately afterward tells her mother and sisters that she's pregnant and engaged to her longtime boyfriend, David. Terry reacts with anger that Hadley had not told her sooner or ever bothered to introduce her to David, leading to an embarrassing drunken scene at a lunch with David's parents.

When Popeye asks Denny what his long-term intentions are concerning his relationship with her mother, he decides to broach the subject with Terry. He is hit with anger and accusations that he is trying to push her into a marriage for which she feels unready. Weary and tired of Terry's ever-shifting moods, Denny confronts her and then storms out of her house. After a brief separation, Terry finally acknowledges the depth of her feelings for him, and they reunite.

When a real estate deal involving both Denny and Terry finally goes through, construction begins in the area surrounding their homes. A worker accidentally uncovers an abandoned, partially covered well, where Grey Wolfmeyer's body is found, revealing that he had never left his family. Rather, he had accidentally fallen in the well and died. Because Grey's secretary had abruptly returned to Sweden at the same time he disappeared, Terry believed he had run away with her.

As the story returns to the initial scene, the Wolfmeyers and Denny, now part of the family, leave Grey's funeral to reveal that Terry, while saddened and grieving, is coming to terms with her own and her daughters' life choices and, finally, finding some inner peace.

Cast

Production

Mike Binder wrote the role of Terry specifically for Joan Allen, having befriended the actress after working with her on the film The Contender.[2][3] According to Binder in the "Making of" featurette on the film's DVD, the script was rejected by several major studios due to the casting of Allen (which goes unexplained); he and his producer brother Jack Binder then sought independent financing and renegotiated compensation deals with talent in order to complete the film.[4] Binder said the film was able to get the green-light from studios when Kevin Costner was cast.[5]

Much of the film was shot at Ealing Studios, London, with some scenes filmed in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit.[6][7] At one point in the film, Detroit rock radio station WRIF serves as a backdrop.[8]

Costner's character, Denny Davies, is believed be based on Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain.[9] Like McLain, Davies is a retired player from the Detroit Tigers who later had a radio talk show (several still pictures of Costner from his 1999 film For Love of the Game, in which he played a Tigers pitcher named Billy Chapel, are used as posters in Davies' radio studio).

Reception

Release

The Upside of Anger premiered in January 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival[10] and went into a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on March 11, 2005.[11][12]

Critical response

The film holds a 74% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "A comedy/drama for grown-ups, with fine performances by Joan Allen and Kevin Costner."[13]

Much praise was given to the performance of Joan Allen, with David Denby of The New Yorker calling her "rancorously funny"[14] and Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter writing, "Allen turns the character into a tour de force that unleashes an unexpected comedy about compassion and self-loathing."[15][16] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote the film is "a fiercely funny human comedy with jokes that sting and leave marks."[17]

Critic Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars and wrote, "I liked these characters precisely because they were not designed to be likable -- or, more precisely, because they were likable in spite of being exasperating, unorganized, self-destructive and impervious to good advice."[18] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club noted the film's thematic similarities to American Beauty, another "dark suburban comedy leavened by the promise of arty redemption."[19] He added, "So long as the tone stays mean and unpredictable, The Upside Of Anger has a coarse edge that's rare for mainstream cinema, helped along by the offbeat rapport between Allen and Costner."[19]

Desson Thomson of The Washington Post wrote "What's best about 'Upside' is its gonzo-sitcom craziness, a situation that lends itself to enjoyable performances," and praised the four actresses who play the Wolfmeyer daughters.[20]

There was criticism of the ending from multiple critics, with The Village Voice calling it a "stupefying final twist, a stunning betrayal of audience trust"[21] and The New York Times describing it as "an utter catastrophe".[18] Ebert defended the ending, writing, "Life can contain catastrophe, and life can cheat. The ending is the making of the movie, its transcendence, its way of casting everything in a new and ironic light, causing us to reevaluate what went before, and to regard the future with horror and pity. Without the ending, The Upside of Anger is a wonderfully made comedy of domestic manners. With it, the movie becomes larger and deeper."[18]

Awards and nominations

Award Category Nominee Outcome Ref.
Chicago Film Critics Association Best Actress Joan Allen Won
Critics' Choice Movie Awards Best Actress Nominated
Best Supporting Actor Kevin Costner Nominated
Online Film Critics Society Best Actress Joan Allen Nominated
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor Kevin Costner Won
Satellite Awards Best Musical or Comedy Actress Joan Allen Nominated [26]
Best Musical or Comedy Actor Kevin Costner Nominated

Home media

The Upside of Anger was released on DVD from New Line Home Entertainment on July 26, 2005.[27]

References

  1. 1 2 "The Upside of Anger". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  2. ↑ Clark, John (March 13, 2005). "Quiet Star Gets Angry and Earthy". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  3. ↑ "The Upside of Anger - Full Production Notes". Made in Atlantis. Archived from the original on May 28, 2013. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  4. ↑ Binder, Mike et al. "Creating the Upside of Anger." (Featurette) DVD. New Line Home Entertainment. The Upside of Anger. July 26, 2005.
  5. ↑ Germain, David (January 25, 2005). "Costner finds new game in 'The Upside of Anger'". The Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 13, 2022. Retrieved September 13, 2022 – via The Gainesville Sun.
  6. ↑ "Michigan's 'Movie Maven'". The Argus-Press. November 13, 2005. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  7. ↑ "The Upside of Anger". filmbudget.com. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  8. ↑ "Detroit Rocker WRIF Launches Podcast Celebrating Its Own Motor City Legacy". InsideRadio.com. November 6, 2019. Archived from the original on September 13, 2022. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  9. ↑ "Costner's back: And that might not be a bad thing". Wilmington Star-News. March 10, 2005. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  10. ↑ Stein, Ruthe (January 25, 2005). "SUNDANCE DIARY / Now batting (once again): Kevin Costner". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  11. ↑ "Sundance Film Festival 2005 Preview: PART FOUR". ComingSoon.net. January 11, 2005. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  12. ↑ Goodridge, Mike (February 24, 2005). "New Line sees upside from Anger". Screen Daily. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
  13. ↑ "The Upside of Anger (2004)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
  14. ↑ Denby, David (April 4, 2005). "Two Women". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on June 27, 2006. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  15. ↑ Honeycutt, Kirk. "The Upside of Anger". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on April 8, 2005. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  16. ↑ Stein, Ruthe (July 26, 2005). "Good acting, adult plot make 'Upside of Anger' worth seeing". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  17. ↑ Travers, Peter (January 27, 2005). "The Upside of Anger". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on July 13, 2022. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  18. 1 2 3 Ebert, Roger (March 17, 2005). "An emotional roller coaster". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  19. 1 2 Tobias, Scott (March 8, 2005). "The Upside Of Anger". The A.V. Club. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  20. ↑ Howe, Desson (March 18, 2005). "These Actors Have 'Upside'". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  21. ↑ Winter, Jessica (March 7, 2005). "Look Back in Anger: Self-Pitying Drunks Drown in Glib Alkie Romance". The Village Voice. Archived from the original on March 10, 2005. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  22. ↑ "Chicago Film Critics Awards - 1998-07". chicagofilmcritics.org. Archived from the original on May 15, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  23. ↑ "The 11th Critics' Choice Movie Awards Winners and Nominees". Broadcast Film Critics Association. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  24. ↑ "2005 Awards (9th Annual)". Online Film Critics Society. January 3, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  25. ↑ Stein, Ruthe (December 13, 2005). "'Brokeback' is top film pick of S.F. critics". SFGATE. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
  26. ↑ "2005 10th Annual SATELLITE™ Awards". International Press Academy. Archived from the original on February 2, 2008. Retrieved December 3, 2022.
  27. ↑ "The Upside of Anger (DVD)". Archived from the original on September 13, 2022. Retrieved September 13, 2022.
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