Shed a tear, if you will, for Hilary Duff. Having finished her stint
as Lizzie McGuire five years ago, she’s too old for the Disney Channel
factory and can’t compete with shinier, newer models like the Jonas
Brothers and Miley Cyrus. But this is rock bottom: I’ve seen a lot of
terrible movies in the line of duty, but What Goes Up might be the only
genuinely unreleasable one. Co-writer/director Jonathan Glatzer makes
dark allusions in the press kit to losing much of his budget and
shooting time just a few weeks before starting. I feel for him.
But the result is that a movie starring Hilary Duff is nearly as cubist
as, say, Alain Resnais’s Muriel—and almost as hard to follow.
I think this was supposed to be a standard-issue Sundance comedy, but I
have no idea what’s going on. Suffice it to say that Steve Coogan is a
cynical reporter who comes to a small town and starts lusting after
teen girls and tries to get into Hilary Duff’s pants in a parody of the
Romeo & Juliet balcony scene, and is redeemed. Or something.
