Upgraded (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) is a definite upgrade for Camila Mendes, who’s best known for playing Veronica in the hit series Riverdale. Her previous starring vehicle, 2020 Netflix thriller-jalopy Dangerous Lies, was llllllllllllousy (no, really, it deserves all those Ls, and you should really drag them out when you say the word out loud), so it’s hard for her new rom-com to be any worse. At least that’s going for it, right? Mendes plays a bottom-of-the-runger who’s trying to work her way up the ladder in the art-auction game – and in order to impress a guy, she fibs about her status in that highly competitive business. And so she finds herself in one dilly of a pickle, but is it sweet or sour? Let’s find out.
UPGRADED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Ana (Camila Mendes) has a master’s degree in art history, and she’s sleeping on her sister’s futon. That’s reality for you. Some rom-com you’ve got here. Aren’t these things supposed to be fantasy? OK – I’m being impatient. It’ll get silly here in a minute, once the coincidences start stacking up like a 10-foot Lego tower. But until then, it’s misery for Ana, who works what appears to be a sub-internship for a hoity-toity art broker that organizes auctions for pieces that are so expensive, it threatens to turn this movie into a rom-vom. Her boss is a real piece of work, as all bosses in movies tend to be: Claire (Marisa Tomei) has a look-at-me French accent and micromanages her employees to the point where she nastily tut-tuts the socks they wear to work. She’s a real sweetheart, is what I’m getting at, and people like Ana exist for Claire to belittle and abuse while they try to believe that they’re lickspittling their way into a poisonous upper-crust business populated by snooty assholes. In this movie, I dunno what Claire wears, but this devil sells Picasso.
Working as a sewage taster might be preferable, but that wouldn’t get Ana the experience she needs to fulfill her dream of opening an art gallery in New York City. She knows her shit, but hasn’t had the opportunity to show her shit to anyone who’ll listen. Opportunity knocks when Claire enlists Ana to be her third assistant – behind two catty sniping you-know-whats played by Rachel Matthews and Fola Evans-Akingbola – for a trip to London, where they’ll organize an extra-hoity-toity auction for a Seller To Be Revealed Later. Huge money, huge stakes, all that. Ana is treated like shit by Claire and the first and second assistants in front of the airline employee, who takes pity on our protag and moves her up to first class. And voila! You’ve got yourself the title of the movie!
In the first-class lounge, Ana accidentally spills a bloody mary on a hunky Briton named William Laroche (Archie Renaux), and whaddayaknow, his seat is right next to hers, too. They hit it off and flirt and sip champagne, and when they get off the plane Ana meets his mother Catherine (Lena Olin), who’s very impressed to learn that Ana is the director of the auction house. Right. That’s something that kind of just fell out of Ana’s mouth, so yes, this part of the plot is built on a lie so shaky, it makes a house of cards look like the brick wall that even Kool-Aid Man couldn’t bust. Also whaddayaknow, Catherine has a houseful of her late husband’s Very Valuable Art, and it doesn’t take a mathematician to put this plot’s two and two together and come up with the identity of the Seller To Be Revealed Later. Whoops. To no one’s surprise, Ana keeps up the charade, as she begins swapping saliva with William and doing her damnedest to maintain the fast track to art-auction glory. She’s gotta come clean at some point though, doesn’t she? SPOILERS BE GONE.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This week on I’m Old (And You Probably Are Too) Theatre is The Devil Wears Prada, which came out 18 years ago; in related news, Anne Hathaway has been in the acting business for a quarter-century. So an obvious update of that weary old Prada plot isn’t quite so obvious unless you’re of a certain vintage. Now someone please pass me my cane and that dish of Werther’s Originals.
Performance Worth Watching: The hope that Tomei could find a fresh angle on Streep’s Devil goes unrealized. She’s not outside the realm of what’s expected, but is still juicy-nasty in a relatively satisfying manner.
Memorable Dialogue: Let’s decontextualize this one, because it’s more fun that way: “I think penises can be very whimsical.” – Ana
Sex and Skin: None. Penises are merely a topic of conversation, and only briefly at that.
Our Take: Upgraded offers an ever-so-slightly more contemporary update of that weary old Prada plot, but not so contemporary that it’s a harsh criticism of toxic workplace environments – the shitty boss/shitty coworkers material is ultimately played for laughs and inevitable comeuppances, and the movie doesn’t seem particularly interested in satire. On top of this lack of ambition, the screenplay takes a while to find its focus, leans on the old Fit Hits The Shan plot and is a little sloppy along the edges, where a few ancillary characters fart around inconsequentially (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Anthony Head’s clever characterization of an acclaimed artist feels purposeless, and almost wasted).
The screenplay finds firmer footing in its female relationships, which eventually become the heart of the story. Director Carlson Young leans into Ana’s interactions with Claire and Catherine, who are both more complex than they seem at first blush; the film’s dramatic crux therefore falls on Mendes’ empathetic persona, and top-shelf character work from dyed-in-the-wool pros Tomei and Olin. Renaux is almost an afterthought here, and he comes off as the one sad cookie in the package that only has two chocolate chips. The rom part of this rom-com is reduced to a few lightweight scenes and bits of a montage (set to – good taste alert – “Iceblink Luck” by the Cocteau Twins). Some might find a lack of emphasis on Ana’s love life disappointing, especially for a movie released during the Valentine’s Day corridor, but at least Young is trying to play a slightly different variation on the same old rom-com theme.
Our Call: Upgraded isn’t radically outside the box for movies of its ilk – it’s definitely more comfort food than hearty challenge. But it has its moments, with Mendes, Tomei and Olin’s work making it worth the attention of your eyeballs. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
