The Upside of Anger DVD Review

In Stores July 26

The big feature on the DVD is the deleted scenes. Here you get to see lots more family encounters, particularly more footage of the daughters. Joan Allen is in most of the scenes, but it shows nice family interaction like Andrea shouting out for Hadley, the birth of Hadley’s twins and picking out Hadley’s wedding dress.

There’s more Joan and Kevin here too, as she catches Denny drinking with the wedding band and demands some love from her daughters in public. The latter scene almost reveals too much, but it’s more top notch Joan Allen work.

Some of them are interesting to see because they don’t work. A scene with oldest daughter asking mom to call dad kind of just hammers the point of this unbelievable disappearance. Weird dream sequences where she catches her husband cheating are too abstract for this real dramedy.

The “making of…” featurette is a bit deeper than an EPK, since they actually talk about the difficulties getting the script sold. Then it goes on to the “it was great working with so and so” piece.

The commentary is a bit interesting because it’s moderated by a filmmaker who did not work on the film. Rod Lurie put Joan Allen and Mike Binder together on The Contender. These are three smart, analytical people so you’ll get a very intellectual track. It keeps moving because there are three of them too. Since they’re friends, there’s a lot of complimenting going on too, but it feels sincere.