What Goes Up

Director and co-writer Jonathan Glatzer handles his talented cast well, and the movie is dark, droll and sentimental in roughly the correct proportions. Worth a look.

The thesis-driven story precludes much dramatic discovery, and the looming shuttle disaster only exacerbates the sense of heavy-handedness.

Even when Mr. Coogan can't make his scenes work, his prickly presence keeps you watching, as does the eerie scenes of winter that Mr. Glatzer captures with the camera.

A pointless and pretentious drama.

Glatzer aims to wring laughter out of this desperation but succeeds only in producing a series of contrived characters and situations that make "The Breakfast Club" look like an unfiltered documentary.

Nothing in this movie is properly focused; everyone keeps talking about a character whom we never meet and does not matter; the tone keeps slipping around from indolent satire to thudding sincerity, and the Challenger shuttle disaster backdrop is queasy-making at best, offensive at worst.

This is rock bottom: I've seen a lot of terrible movies in the line of duty, but What Goes Up might be the only genuinely unreleasable one.