Director Neil Burger, for his part, moves the story along fairly briskly, refusing to let the film's schmaltziness weigh it down. This is nothing remarkable, but it could have been a lot worse.

| Apr 13, 2020

Does it work? No, not really... But Kevin Hart is good.

| Sep 13, 2019

As the paint-by-numbers plot progresses -- over two very long hours -- the treacle thickens and it becomes clear that each of them is slowly going to learn from and be redeemed by the others.

| May 3, 2019

This is not much more than a light crowdpleaser, but when you've got two powerhouse performers like this it is very difficult not to find oneself at least temporarily charmed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 22, 2019

The most optimistic answer would be that after decades of overuse we're beginning to grow weary of such racist caricatures. Let's hope that's true.

| Feb 7, 2019

The Upside has all the elements of a heartwarming film and sometimes arranges them in compelling ways, but the film overall lacks warmth for its characters or passion for its plot.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 7, 2019

Kevin Hart's huge number of fans may push this film to early box-office success but eventually they are likely to toss it into the untouchable pile.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 17, 2019

For the most part, [Hart] is more subdued than usual and aiming to hit deeper notes - call it Hart-felt.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 17, 2019

What this manages to do is to accentuate all the things that were wrong with the original.

| Jan 16, 2019

It's a struggle to find the bright side to this rather hackneyed film.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 15, 2019

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.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 14, 2019

Everything that was already wrong with the original film - its sentimentality, its simplicity - is magnified.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 13, 2019

Compared with the streamlined Intouchables, the remake feels ungainly, inexpertly suturing together the French source material with Hollywood formula.

| Jan 12, 2019

Perpetuating the idea that people with disabilities are entitled fat cats isn't a good look.

| Jan 11, 2019

Cranston and Hart are surprisingly good together. Their chemistry goes a long way to making up for the many implausibilities in the story and the presence of several extraneous subplots.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 11, 2019

Hart has two settings: brash-obnoxious and brash-genial, both of which he flogs to death here.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 11, 2019

It runs two hours and five minutes, which in my opinion is two hours too long.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 11, 2019

A tedious slog that plays up a number of regressive stereotypes and caricatures while also lapsing into cheap, sexually questionable bits of slapstick comedy I found personally loathsome.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 11, 2019

What's needed between the two is electricity, and spontaneous warmth, not chemistry by the numbers in a movie so addicted to milking that it should have been set in a dairy.

| Jan 11, 2019

It's a film that contains complicated, sad, interesting ideas rarely expressed on screen... but whose package is fundamentally unsuited to showcase those ideas, like a sweater with the holes in all the wrong places.

| Jan 11, 2019