The Upside Of Anger

(Herald rating: * * * *)

So much better than it ought to have been, this romantic comedy-drama (a dramatic comedy, maybe; a dramedy?) takes place in the kind of sanitised middle-class world that is the staple of prime-time TV2. But it is possessed of an emotional intelligence that such television drama never has and a handful of zinger one-liners that elevate it into something much better than ordinary.

The miserably underused Joan Allen - who was a marvellous Elizabeth to Daniel Day Lewis' John Proctor in the 1996 film of The Crucible - plays Terry Wolfmeyer, a housewife in suburban Detroit. In the first reel she announces to her four daughters (Witt, Christensen, Russell, Wood) that their father has run off with his Swedish secretary.

This news curdles her already bitter personality to pure gall, which prompts some angry exchanges with her four very different daughters. But it doesn't cool the interest of her neighbour Denny Davies (Costner), a has-been baseball star who survives on the strength of a low-rating talkback programme on the local radio station and as much Budweiser as he can chug during his waking hours.

At first these two are just drinking buddies - the film's indulgence of the characters' indulgence is more than a little problematical - but their relationship soon turns into something else. What lends it interest is the conspicuous inversion of gender roles: she's snaky and critical and driven, and he's like an old sheepdog, full of a shapeless but sincere kind of love. She wants to stop her daughters having the pleasure she's plainly intent on denying herself; he sees them as a path to her.

There are no prizes for guessing which side wins, but Binder, a British TV veteran who wrote the script, has some pleasures in store along the way. Their combative relationship is studded with nice lines. Invited to stay to dinner by one of Terry's daughters, Denny tells the mother: "I think you know my position on free food."

The film opens with a funeral of a person unknown and the shadow of that opening stretches across the whole movie. But the climactic revelation upends all our expectations, including the ones the film has cultivated. It also reveals the irony of the title: there is no upside to anger, except when you learn to let it go.

CAST: Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, Rachel Wood

DIRECTOR: Mike Binder

RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes

RATING: M Contains offensive language and sexual references

SCREENING: Hoyts, starts May 19