Upgraded(Amazon Prime Video)
Starring Camila Mendes, Archie Renaux, Thomas Kretschmann, Grégory Montel, Lena Olin Marisa Tomei
Directed by Carlson Young
Rating: ** ½
If you can get over the fact that everyone who is someone seems to love the heroine in spite of her absurdly obvious flaws, and if you can overlook the glaring similarities in content with The Devil Wears Prada, then Upgraded is a tolerable Cinderella kind of romcom with some really funny exchanges between the heroine Ana(Camilla Mandes) and her brother-in-law(Andrew Shulz).
These occur right at the start of the romcom and they have to do with Ana insisting on shacking up with her sister in her cramped apartment that she shares with her husband. An intrusion that makes him unable to…err, perform.
That vague suggestion of bedtime worries apart, there is little sex in Upgraded—sexiness yes, sexy no— almost as though Ana is a variation on a barbie doll on a trip to London to meet her Prince Charming. And heck, barbies don’t have sex, unless they are conceived by Greta Gerwig.
Ana is seen to be a cute cuddlesome endearing overgrown Alice in blunderland . At her workplace(Ana is an art evaluator) her boss Claire(Marisa Tomei) behaves like a country cousin of Meryl Streep on The Devil Wears Prada. Her three snooty female assistants are like the stepsisters in Cinderella , deliberately tripping Ana over with their collective stilettoes.
There is a likeable sequence at the airport where the lady at the check-in counter upgrades Ana’s ticket to firstclass after seeing how badly she is treated by the snooty assistants.Julie Agnes as the lady at the check-in counter gives the best performance in the film.
On the flight, Ana meets her Prince Charming William(Archie Renaux) who immediately falls in love with her. On landing Archie’s aristocratic mother(once an actress who, are told, had done a yoghurt ad in her youth) takes to Ana as though by magic spell.
And so it continues. All of London’s beau monde loves Ana, which kind of isolates her boss and her trio of wicked assistants. What starts off as a fun poke at the super-rich ends up being a tedious tribute to the virtues of monetary disempowerment. You see, you can be poor and funny and happy and glamorous if you put your heart to it.Upgraded tells you that.Don’t take it too seriously. Just giggle and sign out.
