Ray Pride

There's a churlish style of movie reviews that offers a plot synopsis, tells you why you'd be an idiot to hate something so imperfect you've seen so many times before, and then offers an undersized life preserver for the survivors of the sinking critique. "The Upside of Anger" is one of those rare movies that seems to suit that approach:

Hate the title. Hate the supposedly thoughtful child's voiceover that's actually unfathomable. Puzzled by a major twist in the plot. But other than that: Mike Binder's "The Upside of Anger" is a million miles away from his sour HBO series, "The Mind of the Married Man," and a gratifyingly bittersweet and bracingly dark comedy-drama, a stellar showcase for Joan Allen, the fierce, funny, shamelessly transfixing center of this haphazardly constructed yet rich family drama of abandonment and acceptance. A suburban Detroit mother of four--living on "Puritan Avenue"--Terry Wolfmeyer's husband disappears without a word a week after his young Swedish assistant moves back home and she presumes he's run off, too. Slipping into a midlife haze of Grey Goose and blue sarcasm, she makes life heck for her daughters: college student Alicia Witt, tense dancer Keri Russell, college-hating Erika Christensen, voiceover-burdened Evan Rachel Wood. Kevin Costner's goofy-great as her alternately drunk-and-buzzed neighbor, a baseball veteran now doing drive-time radio while refusing to talk baseball. The sexy, crackling slow burn of their courtship is marvelous fun, a feat of actorly, flirtatious perfection, and Allen gets to be regal and raw and rash and simply indelible. Binder and Richard Greatrex worship the faces of his actresses and actors, even Binder himself, in a sizable, twisted and funny side role as Costner's producer, a lech named Shep who attaches himself to one of the just-out-of-high-school daughters. 118m. (Ray Pride)

"The Upside of Anger" opens Friday.

(2005-03-15)

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