Upgraded follows Ana (Camila Mendes) who meets Will (Archie Renaux) on a fateful flight to London, under pretenses. Ana is an art auctioneer intern who is mistaken by Will for her boss Claire (Marisa Tomei) and she must keep pretending to be the boss to keep the boy.
Now, this is my least favorite premise for a rom-com. I hate the “meet cute starts with a lie” trope that ultimately crumbles away when the truth comes out. It’s so boring and so predictable. Within 25 minutes, you know exactly what the conflict will be, when it will come out, and how it will be resolved. I get it, these movies are always going to be predictable like that and people love them for that. I’m not one of those people, unfortunately.
I guess the one surprise is the movie focuses on Ana and her job rather than her relationship with Will. Outside of one montage of them kissing, they don’t do a whole lot on screen which makes me care about them getting together by the end of the movie.
For the movie itself, it wasn’t that special in my eyes. The look is very Hallmark-y and the dialogue isn’t much better. There is a scene in particular in a car where it feels like none of the characters are in the same car with how many cuts there are.
The characters aren’t that engaging. Both Mendes and Renaux are stereotypes who try to add depth to their characters with no success. Tomei seems like she’s having fun trying to do her best Meryl Streep impersonation from The Devil Wears Prada mixed with Edna from The Incredible but she isn’t enough to make this fun. None of the side characters are anything more than “quirky” additions
FINAL THOUGHTS
Upgraded tries to combine elements of Cinderella and The Devil Wears Prada to no real avail. The leads try but they are given nothing interesting or new to work with and the whole movie feels made for the Hallmark channel. I am not a big fan of this but I can see other people who like a nice, harmless, predictable rom-com like this.
