Selfish and sozzled

The woman is Terry (Joan Allen), drowning her sorrows in alcohol and resisting the equally sozzled advances of a persistent radio DJ neighbour (Kevin Costner) and wondering why her daughters are about as supportive as a bevy of recalcitrant monkeys.

If only to stop him battering on her door, she does soon allow him to become a drinking buddy, and when he becomes a kind of surrogate father to her unsympathetic brood a relationship is finally established.

The film stumbles eventually into a feelgood ending that negates most of what has gone on before. It is also only on a very moderate level as a piece of direction and looks, at least from the print shown at the press screening, as if it was shot on stock that has seen better days.

That's the downside of Upside. But, in its favour, both Allen's strung-out performance and Costner's unselfishly oafish turn, are very watchable, and Binder himself is entertaining as the hypocritical radio producer who dares to seduce one of the daughters.

Definitely a curate's egg, it's less pretentious than the same director's recent Reign Over Me and all the better for showing an American family who, even in extremes, refuse to hug each other to death. Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt and Erika Christensen are the daughters, and a more prettily selfish lot I haven't seen on film for some time.

The Upside Of Anger
Cert: 15