I was hopeful yet apprehensive of this one. In spite of its cliched themes, the reviews offered by both the critics and the general audience were commendable.
It is rather unfortunate to note that these reviews may not be reflective of the film’s quality, but rather a lowering of the benchmark associated with rom coms.
Which is quite obvious. In every possible way, almost.
Ana (Camila Mendes) was an intern in a fashion house, seeking desperately to finish her internship and open up her own gallery.
After spotting a stupid mistake done by one of the colleagues, Ana receives a promotion from her awful superior: Claire (Marisa Tomei) who could drown in a sea of equal employment opportunity lawsuits in the form of a work-related trip to London.
Because of the two dimensional tar pit of drama, ceaselessly portrayed clumsily through incredible stereotypes, involved with her character Suzette and Renee (please picture human versions of the Siamese cats from The Lady and the Tramp), Ana gets her flight rescheduled but gets elevated to first class.
In this timeline, she finds Will (Archie Renaux), a character straight out of British upper class stereotypes. The type of elitist that is limited to the television show made in Chelsea or the perception American film producers have that they run rampant all over the UK, clad in salmon chins.
It could be argued that spending one night on the Bigg Market would be enough to win over business executives in Hollywood.
At some point, Will announces to Ana, “I can’t speak your language. Being English is my only card with you, isn’t it”? This is good since it is in fact, the only personality he has.
However, since this is a romcom, Ana cannot just interact with Will normally, she after all has to have an agenda. She pretends to be the president of her own label. A mistruth that, naturally, develops into far more than she anticipated.
Most of the viewers will find it very difficult to appreciate the last few scenes because they are so concerned about the lie and how it spirals. The embarrassment of it all and how the events transpire disappoint any modicum of gratification one may have wanted to find in it.
Repeatedly viewers, witnesses and observers are subjected to one unbearably atrocious character after another who gets more infuriating to observe. The Americans groom a rather obnoxious image in what they call democracy, the Brits were all so unbearably privileged that I began wishing Barry Keoghan would join them.
All of this is meant to be funny, but it was disturbing. This criticism is made only a few months after the previous critical work Saltburn was also vulgar in terms of the social class.
And speaking of laughter, I got one out of the entire exaggerated runtime. And that was at a simple knob gag. Upgraded simply cannot seem to be funny in any of the episodes and evenly jokes in a few of the native American episodes.
For instance, as one of the members of the cast they also have the Girla Derry’s Saoirse Monica Jackson as Anas fellow intern. Jackson is an excellent comic performance, but she is completely wasted in Upgraded. She is barely in the movie (only in a couple of scenes before and after the trip to London), and when she is, she cannot salvage the clumsy dialogue that she is handed.
It is someone who could have made this pile-up into something even better, but she gets sidelined.
There is the accumulation of self absorption that as the film keeps moving in the style of golf equates to a deeper level of depravity. The apparent lesson from this is tale is that the rich will always remain rich and being nasty and unscrupulous will yield success. Hooray.
To be honest, I don’t care about either of those things.
There was only one character in the movie who had to face the consequences of their actions only to discover that they did not commit any wrongdoing. There’s little to admire about his character because his horrible side is hinted at, and he is depicted as quite the antagonist, but considering how loathsome everyone else is hardly eccentric.
Upgraded only excels at the togetherness of the two leading stars. Camila Mendes and Archie Renaux have great banter between them, and it is always entertaining to watch, especially those initial airplane scenes.
However, their chemistry is rarely granted the time or the room to develop as Carlson Young, the director has, for some reason, determined that this aspect, together with the comedy, should give way to the workplace comedy that is unfolding at the background.
And that’s fine, you can have a workplace comedy upscaled actually achieves that somehow. But this is a romantic comedy and that is what women a always think when they see it, not about the comedy in the workplace, but about the romance.
This isn’t possible here because it’s mostly not there. Ana apparently was with Wills collapsed mother Catherine (Lena Olin) more than she was around Will, in fact she never seen him as a person.
Upgraded probably does not mark the lowest point for the rom-coms. It’s poorly scripted, badly constructed and barely knows how to structure a love story let alone the comedy aspect. Its preposterous meet cute surrogate the woo-woo finale should be sent for a ban – coz few can get behind this.
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