Critic Reviews

French cinema has a lot going for it, but the one thing Americans do best is story. And so “Intouchables,” now The Upside, has a story that finally works.

The film’s predictability is offset by what Hart and Cranston bring to the proceedings.

The pairing of Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart in the lead roles pays off big time, with more laugh-out-loud moments than the original and some particularly hilarious work from Hart, who steps up his game after his fun if broad-minded performances in Get Hard and the Ride Along movies.

In the end, The Upside is the sum of its good players and dubious politics, wrenching genuine tears from a story that celebrates the rich promise of life in all its shades of joy and heartbreak.

While entertaining, The Upside lacks the original film’s fizzy spark, the prickly charisma of its co-stars, and the tantalizingly sense that this incredible story — which is actually true — happened on a planet we would recognize as our own.

The Upside is a movie that somehow works, at least some of the time, even when it shouldn’t.

The racial politics feel almost willfully retro, but the actors’ charisma cuts through: Forced to work strictly from the neck up, Cranston is just the right amount of gruff; Hart, aside from a deeply unnecessary catheter scene, gives a gratifyingly prickly and vulnerable performance. Somewhere beneath this passable-enough Upside, there’s a better, sharper movie for them both.

Cranston and Hart fight tooth and nail to keep the film as charming as possible, though, with Hart going to particularly impressive lengths. It almost works, until you remember it shouldn't.

What makes The Upside work as well as it often does is how the actors are able to convey the unlikely affinity these unlikely people share.

The Upside has a downside: We’ve seen it a million times before.