Upgraded is a romantic comedy film released on Prime Video on February 9, 2024. It is directed by Carlson Young and the screenplay is written by Christine Lenig, Justin Matthews and Luke Spencer Roberts. The film has a runtime of about 1 hour and 44 minutes.
The story follows Ana, who upgraded to first class on a work trip. She meets Will and lies about her identity. This set off a chain of glamorous events and a romantic encounter. However, Ana’s lies start to threaten her success.
The cast of the film includes Camila Mendes as Ana Santos, Archie Renaux as William Laroche, Marisa Tomei as Claire Dupont, Lena Olin as Catherine Laroche, Anthony Head as Julian Marx, Saoirse-Monica Jackson as Amy, Rachel Matthews as Suzette, Andrew Schulz as Ronnie, Grégory Montel, Thomas Kretschmann, Matteo Lane, Aimee Carrero as Vivian and others.
Upgraded Review
The film starts with Ana admiring a painting by Hilma af Klint from the Swan series. Talking about contradiction and how the circles in front of her represent the swan or masculine & feminine, according to one perspective. Contradiction in reality is that it’s not even Ana’s house. It’s a one-bedroom flat of her sister & her husband, where Ana has intruded into their space for the past many months. Apparently, she is enrolled in a training program for an art auction house after completing her master’s in Art History. However, it’s unpaid and she doesn’t have a fortune to her name to spend.
The only way to make it in New York before getting kicked out of her sister’s flat is to impress her ruthless boss, Claire Dupont. In a successful attempt to impress, after discovering a typo in an auction catalogue, Claire invites Ana to London to assist with a major collection. Dodging sabotage attempts by the other two assistants, Ana gets a stroke of luck with getting upgraded to the business class. Enjoying the luxuries in the moment, she lets herself get loose more than she should have. That includes an accidental encounter with William Laroche and introducing herself as the youngest director of her auction company.
As William says, “A Chance encounter can change the course of your life”, this serendipitous meeting with him changes the course of Ana’s life. Her lies become bigger than she expected when William turns out to be the son of a ‘UK famous celebrity’ and also the person auctioning the art collection with her company. On one side she lives her most glamorous life, tagging along with the Laroches, meeting the big names of various industries.
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On the other side, she hustles to keep up with her work and also wins points for completing difficult tasks with some help from William’s family reputation. She continues to get the best of both worlds until her lies start to threaten her real identity and work. Spiralling everything down to rock bottom. While it’s mostly tagged as a rom-com, the drama and deceit by Ana take centre stage here. It’s more interesting to see what would happen when her lies are exposed to her boss and William’s mother, who adores her completely. Even her expose doesn’t happen in front of him (like a big revelation), he just gets to know about it from third parties.
Romance certainly takes a back seat in front of Ana’s ambitions. Even though everything was going great, with good performances by the cast and the right pacing of the story – the last act of the story doesn’t really leave a nice impact. It looks like everyone’s trying to defend Ana’s lies, which she would have probably continued if she wasn’t exposed.
Ana also calls it an accident, although, in her complete sobriety, she decided to play the role of the youngest director, to match her co-passengers esteem. Instead of facing repercussions she is rewarded much more than her lying persona and that feels unsatisfactory. It gives a message that it’s okay to lie or take advantage of people if your current life is shitty. Also, in terms of romance, there isn’t much of a common link between the characters that would make sense for them to be falling for each other, except for sexual attraction. It’s a rather forced ‘happy ending’. Maybe not ending up with William would have been a lesson to learn for Ana.
Overall, it’s a decent film with a subpar story, just don’t expect things to make proper sense. Like drinking all night in clubs when the lead character hardly has 120 dollars in her account. One surprising thing about it was the cameo by comedian Andrew Schulz as Ronnie. He seemed to have great potential to even lead a film on his own, seeing how he dominated the scenes with limited lines. Even Matteo Lane makes a brief appearance but it doesn’t have much impact in the film.
Rating: 2/5
Upgraded is available to stream on Prime Video.
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