No subversion in this Hollywood version
Bryan Cranston, left, and Kevin Hart in The Upside, a remake of the 2011 French film The Intouchables.
The Upside
1/2 (out of 4) Starring Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart. Directed by Neil Burger. At GTA cinemas. 125 minutes. PG
There is an upside to this remake of the 2011 French film,
The Intouchables: It’s not as terrible as one might expect.
Movies remade from other (usually better) movies are almost always pretty awful and U.S. filmmakers are particularly lousy at remaking them.
This one is passably OK, sort of somewhere on the spectrum between the experience of True
Grit, where the 2010 sequel was leaps and bounds better than the 1969 John Wayne original, and Hairspray, whose1988 original was way, way, way better than the inexecrably horrid 2007 remake.
The opening segment featuring a madcap car chase shows one just what to expect. It’s sorta fun but not nearly as darkly comic and subversive as the original.
This time out, we have Bryan Cranston playing Phillip Lacasse, a wealthy New Yorker rendered quadriplegic in a paragliding accident, who decides to hire a very unqualified Black man named Dell Scott (Kevin Hart) as his “life auxiliary.”
Lacasse, worn down by sorrow and rage, really doesn’t want another chirpy, life-affirming caregiver. He really just wants to check out permanently.
The ever-reliable Cranston delivers a well-modulated performance that works so well be- cause he doesn’t seek to exploit our sympathies.
Hart, whose comic stylings tend toward the loud and obnoxious, wisely chooses to dial things down — way down. As a result, he’s not particularly believable or even likeable as Dell but manages to deliver a passable dramatic performance.
The millstone around everyone’s neck is the screenplay by relative unknown Jon Hartmere, which borrows much of the structure of the original film but doesn’t begin to match its anarchic tone.
It can’t even manage to make its secondary characters particularly interesting.
Yvonne, Lacasse’s faithful assistant played by Nicole Kidman, has been so poorly wrought she decides to mostly hide behind a set of spectacles. So much more could have been done with uber-snobbish downstairs neighbour Carter Locke (Tate Donovan), and a better writer would have found a way to do it.
The script also doesn’t have anything particularly illuminating to say about the ennui of life — whether you’re able or differently abled — and the pos- sibility of redemption, which goes well beyond buying your long-suffering ex and son a nice place to live.
Despite the plentitude of opera and Aretha, there just isn’t much here that soars and thrills.
The upside here may therefor to draw cineaste’s attention to the much better film upon which this one is based.