The Upside: Moderately uplifting

The Upside (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for suggestive content and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Hollywood efforts to remake French films are spotty at best; for every reasonable success — Point of No Return and Three Men and a Baby come to mind — we endure half a dozen wincingly awful bombs such as Dinner for Schmucks, My Father the Hero, Two Much, The Toy, Oscar, The Jackal and … well, you get the idea.

Helping Phillip (Bryan Cranston, left) with his daily correspondence is one of many tasks
that Dell (Kevin Hart) initially finds bewildering ... particularly when Yvonne (Nicole Kidman)
makes a point of removing hand-addressed, light blue envelopes from the stack.

Too many American filmmakers simply don’t get — or fail to appreciate — the wit, subtlety and gentle humor of European writers and directors, who obviously have more faith in their viewers’ intelligence. American remakes tend toward vulgarity, boorishness and broadly overstated farce. Characters who felt real in a French original, become garish burlesques.

I therefore greeted the announced remake of 2011’s The Intouchables with wariness, particularly when Kevin Hart — an aggressive comedian hardly known for delicacy — was announced as co-star. The original is a quiet masterpiece that’s both funny and deeply touching; directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledana did a superb job of turning Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s 2001 memoir — Le Second Souffle (A Second Wind) — into a heartwarming dramedy about two men from completely different worlds, who nonetheless forge a deep, interconnected friendship.

Well, color me surprised. Director Neil Burger’s The Upside may not have the emotional impact of its predecessor, but it’s a game effort. Credit screenwriter Jon Hartmere for retaining both the original’s crucial plot points, and (for the most part) its thoughtful, often melancholy tone. The modifications required by transplanting these events to New York are integrated smoothly, and Hartmere even made a few wise improvements (such as ditching a snotty daughter character, who was a pointless distraction).

Best of all, Burger successfully guides Hart through a comparatively nuanced performance, mostly bereft of the mugging, wild gesticulations and wide-eyed bluster that have become his signature in moron comedies such as Ride Along, Get Hard and Central Intelligence. His Dell is a fairly real guy here: one to whom we can relate, and with whom we can sympathize.

He’s an embittered ex-con who can’t see beyond a lifetime of bad choices. He’s long separated from a girlfriend (Aja Naomi King, as Latrice) and son (Jahi Di’Allo Winston, as Anthony) who want nothing to do with him; he’s also just this side of being sent back to court by a parole officer whose patience has worn thin. The latter’s final edict is adamant: Get a job. Now. Or tell it to the judge.

The Big Wedding: Should have been annulled

The Big Wedding (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Hollywood never learns.

American filmmakers simply can’t remake French comedies, much less French sex comedies. The results are almost always stiff and awkward, the actors rarely comfortable with dialogue and ribald situations that just come naturally to our cousins across the pond.

Ellie and Don (Diane Keaton and Robert De Niro, right), although divorced for years,
agree to fake being married, in order not to offend the deeply conservative Madonna
(Patricia Rae, center left) and her deceptively demure daughter, Nuria (Ana Ayora).
The thing is, Nuria isn't as chaste as her appearance would suggest, and Ellie and Don
aren't as "over" each other as they'd like to believe. One would expect hilarity from
such a premise. One would be mistaken.

We Americans simply ain’t got the necessary je ne sais quoi.

That’s certainly the case with The Big Wedding, which boasts a great cast that is all dressed up, with nowhere to go. Director Justin Zackham’s script is clumsy and under-developed, his characters behaving in ways that are insufficiently justified by woefully thin motivations. Indeed, at 90 minutes, this film feels like a savagely edited “dump job” that Lionsgate chopped up and released in the (probably vain) hope of getting at least one good weekend’s box-office take.

Zackham adapted his film from Jean-Stéphane Bron’s 2006 comedy, Mon frère se marie, which in turn borrows several plot elements from 1978’s classic La cage aux folles. Escalating sexual hijinks revolve around the wedding of a young couple, whose respective families are mismatched: one conservative and demure, the other ultra-liberal and sexually liberated.

In order not to offend the former group, the latter attempt to clean up their act. Sort of. With less than optimal results.

Cue considerable hilarity.

Or that was the plan, anyway, but Zackham too frequently stalls at the comedy gate. Yes, some moments are funny; yes, others are poignant and sweet. But far too many scenes emerge as missed opportunities, thanks in part to a sniggering, frat-boy attitude to the sexual humor: no surprise, since Zackham’s only previous feature credit is 2001’s sex-crazed frat-boy bomb, Going Greek.

Indeed, I can’t imagine why he was entrusted with this assignment. Because he also wrote 2007’s tear-jerking The Bucket List? That certainly didn’t qualify him to direct the likes of Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon ... and, based on the results, he definitely wasn’t ready for the major league.

Dinner for Schmucks: Overcooked

Dinner for Schmucks (2010) • View trailer for Dinner for Schmucks
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for sexual candor, partial nudity and considerable smutty content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.5.10
Buy DVD: Dinner for Schmucks • Buy Blu-Ray: Dinner for Schmucks [Blu-ray]

American remakes of French comedies generally don't work very well, although that doesn't stop Hollywood from trying. 

Tinseltown studio execs love to extol rare successes such as The Birdcage (from La Cage Aux Folles) and Three Men and a Baby (Trois Hommes et un Couffin), conveniently forgetting that every hit stands in the far larger shadow of numerous train wrecks: The Toy (Le Jouet), Buddy, Buddy (L'emmerdeur), The Man with One Red Shoe (Le Grand Blond avec une Chaussure Noire), Just Visiting (Les Visiteurs), My Father, the Hero (Mon Pere, ce Heros), Pure Luck (Le Chevre), Jungle 2 Jungle (Un Indien dans la Ville) and The Man Who Loved Women (Franois Truffaut's L'homme Qui Aimait les Femmes, no less), among many others. 

In desperate need of a total boob to bring as a guest to his boss' cruel dinner
party, Tim (Paul Rudd) bumps into Barry (Steve Carell), a mousy IRS agent
who can't wait to share his unusual hobby: "mouse-terpiece" tableaus that
feature tiny stuffed rodents wearing itty-bitty human outfits. Yes, that's "The
Last Supper," and the astonished Tim is holding Jesus himself.

Honestly, the list is endless. 

Part of the problem is scale: American directors can't resist the compulsion to make a small joke large, a large joke massive, and a massive joke elephantine. If destroying a chair is funny, then destroying an entire apartment building must be even funnier. (Well ... no.) All sense of proportion is lost, and the scene's humor is sacrificed to bombast. 

The most awkward efforts, though, involve a sexual element: always a major mistake. The French handle sensuality and casual infidelity far differently than we do; their playful je ne sais quoi makes such movies erotic and droll, whereas American translations inevitably feel awkward, forced and vulgar. 

So: When American director Jay Roach focuses on the central relationship between Barry (Steve Carell) and Tim (Paul Rudd), Dinner for Schmucks stays on solid ground and is both funny and unexpectedly poignant. Credit Carell for the latter; he can go from unabashedly goofy to morosely vulnerable in the blink of an eye. 

But when Roach and screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman stray into the sexier territory inhabited with cheerful inhibition by Francis Veber's Le Diner de Cons, which inspired this film, the results fall as flat as the proverbial pancake. Great chunks of Dinner for Schmucks — those involving a hedonistic photographer/artist (Jemaine Clement, as Kieran) and Barry's grasping, sex-crazed, long-ago one-night stand (Lucy Punch, as Darla) — land with thuds that reverberate for miles. 

Both Clement and Punch are given impossible dialogue and thrust into stupidly contrived situations; Kieran's conversations about goats could win the annual Bulwer-Lytton Award for bad writing.