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What Goes Up Reviews
Strong cast, not much else.
What a load of crap! I thought I would've stumbled upon greatness as I did with indie gem "Wendy and Lucy", boy was I wrong. Disappointing performances from notable stars such as Steve Coogan, Hilary Duff and Josh Peck this Dramedy if you can even call it that failed in ever sense of the word. Set in 1986 with some characters not even looking the part, the story had potential at first but fell on its face hard with nonsensical subplots and overly dramatic characters. I would challenge my movie watching friends too watch so we can pick it apart but everyone else, Avoid avoid avoid at all cost.
This movie tries to be one of those cute, quirky, indie movies that everyone claims. to love. It has all the cliches, but is mostly just filled with annoying characters. You do get to see a scantily clad Hilary Duff, but not enough to make up for the rest of the movie. It also has Molly Shannon, one of the least talented actress there is. Skip it.
"What Goes Up" tries really hard to find its point, sometimes a little too hard. That's not to say that there isn't any substance here--there was definitely something--but the film never digs deeper. Steve Coogan gives a good performance as the lead character (never heard of him before), and Hilary Duff does okay as Lucy albeit a few awkwardly uttered F bombs. Josh Peck is just creepy, and Olivia Thirlby just looks sullen or screams her head off. "What Goes Up" feels really somber and melancholy, but we never see into the drama. That's the problem. There's no real character development and not much story telling going on. It just skims the murky surface of an implied very deep pool of mystery. Which this film should have unraveled, but alas, it failed. Not recommended.
I like movies that make you think. And although it was an indie film, the movie did manage to portray an effective message and an impacting plot.
"What Goes Up" tries really hard to find its point, sometimes a little too hard. That's not to say that there isn't any substance here--there was definitely something--but the film never digs deeper. Steve Coogan gives a good performance as the lead character (never heard of him before), and Hilary Duff does okay as Lucy albeit a few awkwardly uttered F bombs. Josh Peck is just creepy, and Olivia Thirlby just looks sullen or screams her head off. "What Goes Up" feels really somber and melancholy, but we never see into the drama. That's the problem. There's no real character development and not much story telling going on. It just skims the murky surface of an implied very deep pool of mystery. Which this film should have unraveled, but alas, it failed. Not recommended.
Pretty boring. Tries to be quirky but ends up being lame and pretentious. The presence of Hillary Duff in the cast should tell you this movie can only go badly.
Probably the worst Hilary Duff movie
I watched this while in a half-delirious state after traveling all day; tired as I was it kept me awake! I can't pretend that it's a great movie, but by the end I felt like it was really insightful in a weird, cynical way. A little unique and refreshing, although some characters/parts were never fully developed and took away from the overall likability. I think it's worth watching although that could be because I'm a slightly cynical teenager too =]
Steve Coogan needs to stop making films. (Unless Michael Winterbottom's directing, then he can make all the films he wants.)
It is Saturday morning, February 27, 2010. It is a quarter past noon and instead of watching the men's bronze medal game, Switzerland V Sweden, I am watching the most ridiculous and most boring movie I have ever had the displeasure to watch. I don't even want to say the name of the stupid movie, but I guess I have to otherwise you might accidentally watch it and then I would just feel horrible about that because my job is to warn you against these hideous movies. What I'll do is, refer to this heaping pile of dog snot with some sort of creative expletives, so when you see them you know I'm talking about this disgusting pant load. Blech, I shiver just thinking about it! This vile extrusion of soft dung is about some jerk journalist who fell in love with one of his subjects. One day he covered this story about a poor woman whose child had been shot and died during a random shooting. He thought she was so brave for the way she was handling this terrible tragedy that he fell for her. He wrote an article about her and began dating her shortly after. However, one day he came calling, he entered her apartment and noticed a strong smell of natural gas. The stove had been left on and next to the stove was the dead body of the "brave" girl he had fallen in love with. Very sad, very tragic and the start of a really good movie, normally, but no, they manage to turn this into refuse, a big dumpster full of 3 month old refuse! Like all good journalists instead of reporting that she had died, he decided to write daily reports about how brave and strong this woman was and I'm thinking, "Where is the body in all this?" I am sure after a few days this chick is probably as stinky as this movie! But NOOO! He went about this for days and then his boss started to get on his case because he was spending way too much time on this story. She wanted him to move on to something else, something fresh. The editor sent him to Florida to cover the story of the teacher who was about to go into space. Oh, that's right, this movie took place in the mid 80's, a week before the Challenger was about to make its final...well, you know! When he got down there, instead of checking into a hotel, he decided to visit an old friend from college who he hadn't seen in years and see if he could stay with him so that he could save a couple of bucks. His friend turned out to be a teacher who was really good at relating with outcasts. All of the losers, nerds, geeks, dweebs, sluts, and dickheads all adored this man. He was a real influence on them. He was so interested in them that the school board thought he may have been having an inappropriate affair with some of the girls he was helping. However, we don't know that until much later, what we do know is that the body of this man was found just outside of his apartment building where it was thought he had jumped from the roof to end his own life, probably because of the accusations or maybe he just fell. Who knows, they never freaking making it clear! As if that is not enough to turn you off, here is where it gets really bad! The journalist saw a story with the kids. He wanted to write about how lost these students were without the only person in the world that understood them. He used the fact that he knew the teacher to gain the students' confidence so that he could get close to them and get more information about them. He deceived them with "personal" stories about him and his friend, when in reality he hadn't seen him in over ten years. And after all of that, they did nothing with it. They didn't follow up, commented or explained anything of his behavior. I was as if they did that solely to fill up space in the movie. I feel as though I wasted two hours of my life for nothing. It is pretty difficult to bore me. I usually find some angle that I can relate to, but I honestly don't even know how the editors or producers found any part of this story interesting. As I promised, I must tell you the name of this piece of shit movie. However, I don't want to because I know if I do you might watch it just to see if I was right or not. Well, if you do that it is your own fault, don't come crying to me if you do. I am going to type this title and then I'm going to go take a long shower with a nice bar of extra gritty Lava soap and a one to one solution of bleach. I'm shivering just thinking about it. If for some reason you have the movie What Goes Up in your Netflix queue, please remove it immediately. Don't say I didn't warn you!
I'm not sure what the writer and director were trying to accomplish, maybe I'm just slow but I just didn't get any of it and thought it was all pretty pointless. I only finished the movie due to my love of Steve Coogan but even his charm and presence couldn't save this. The acting and characters were fine, its just that there wasn't any story at all. It seemed to be directionless and I wasn't sure what I was watching. Pretty dissaponting and avoidable.
Charming, but painfully slow-paced. And oddly enough, the film reminds me of a strange combination of "Local Hero" and "The Breakfast Club". But that is probably nothing more than the 80's setting... In any case, I'll be on the lookout for more from Glatzer.