The Upside (2019)

The Upside is a 2019 American comedy drama, which is a generous phrase for a film that spent two years in distribution limbo after its original studio collapsed, then emerged blinking into a January release slot and promptly took the top spot at the box office. It is the third remake of the French hit The Intouchables, itself drawn from the lives of a real quadriplegic aristocrat and his unconventional caregiver. Neil Burger directs Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston through a series of mismatched-buddy set pieces, and the two men do have a pleasant chemistry. The film around them is another matter.

On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is thin. The cast places Black performers in the lead roles, which is a fact of the source material's DNA as much as a statement of intent. The screenplay sets a white billionaire against a Black parolee and lets the friction sit there, unexamined, feelgood texture where a harder film would find a subject. Nicole Kidman, Golshifteh Farahani, and Aja Naomi King occupy capable but entirely supportive posts: the assistant, the therapist, the ex-wife. Nobody is arguing about power. The quadriplegic protagonist is granted dignity and a full emotional life, which is humane and welcome, though the film presents this as a story about people, not as advocacy.

The closing act is instructive. Dell ends the picture as an entrepreneur, selling motorized wheelchairs, his reward for learning to seize the day. Wealth here is a benevolent enabler, a machine for granting second acts, and the movie never once doubts it. Critics called the whole affair preachy and manipulative, and they were right, though the sermon concerns uplift, not politics. It is a soft, well-meaning, deeply conventional piece of work, and it knows exactly what it is.