‘Up Against It’ Review: Antonio Banderas Stars in a British Family Dramedy That Ignores Its Own Conundrums

A crisscrossing family dramedy, Trudie Styler’s “Up Against It” features wonderful performances and intriguingly modern ideas, but it seldom coheres as comedy or drama. A tale of divorced parents, their respective partners and their ailing, precocious teen, this occasionally effervescent film has much to enjoy, but just as much that lands with an awkward thud.

Opening with 14-year-old Rose (Eden Hamilton) getting into arguments on the London tube, the movie swiftly establishes its character dynamics by way of arguments and celebrations. Returning home from school, Rose balks upon learning that her mother Saffron (Eva Birthistle), a high-strung paralegal, has got engaged to psychiatrist Kingsley (Arinzé Kene) on the same day her divorce has been finalized. Unhappy with this development, and with life in general, Rose calls to complain to her renowned classical musican father Alvaro (Antonio Banderas) — her loving “papi” — and his younger cellist girlfriend Lara (Úrsula Corberó), before joining them for dinner.  

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Saffron doesn’t get along with the Spanish half of this equation — Lara was the other woman in her marriage, though it’s never clear if Rose knows this — while Kingsley and his teen son Michael (Jordan Nash) remain neutral parties, as the two halves of Rose’s family try to lead separate lives. All the while, Rose, who pokes and prods at her mother every chance she gets, knows which side she prefers.

Saffron and Alvaro’s issues linger too, but the exes are forced to put aside their acrimony when Rose’s long-dormant cancer returns. Courtesy of their conscientious, amusingly monotone physician Dr. Abara (Forest Whitaker), they’re placed in an awkward but urgent scenario: Rose needs a stem cell donor to survive, and finding a match could take ages, but her chances would improve greatly if she had a biological sibling. And thanks to modern medicine, well, this is now a possibility without her mum and dad having to be intimate, but it raises thorny topics like getting Kingsley and Lara on board as co-parents, and the ethics of creating a savior child.

The film, however, only fleetingly engages with these dilemmas, whether as serious subjects, or even for their comedic potential. At most, they become ideas for Rose to ruminate on before coming to a personal decision, but as the plot wears on, the feisty teen is pushed further into the background so the film can focus on her parents instead. That she’s made vestigial to her own cancer drama is a bit confounding, though not nearly as much as how “Up Against It” frames apology and atonement (for mistakes its adult characters make) as mere repetitive persistence.

The movie is clumsily assembled too, moving on too quickly from scenes and moments, when lingering on them even a tad might have led to understanding the characters better, or letting their one-liners land. That so many of its punchier lines seem to be the product of haphazard ADR only exacerbates this disconnect, yielding an experience where what you’re watching is less of a complete, harmonious story and more of a theoretical framework for one.

The performances are fantastic, starting with the young Hamilton, whose boisterous, me-against-the-world demeanor forms the movie’s backbone — that is, until it’s forgotten about. Rose even seems to have a crush on her stepbrother-to-be, but this is just one of several storylines the film brushes aside — like Kingsley and Lara exchanging numbers only to never interact one-on-one — instead of mining it for comedy or drama.

That said, when it switches focus to Saffron and Alvaro, Birthistle and Banderas give a moving, realistic center to a film that otherwise struggles to focus, en route to some melodramatic rug pulls that Styler also quickly walks back. There’s a lot going on in “Up Against It” — perhaps more than it can handle — and though the film is light-footed enough to make for casual entertainment, it also leaves far too much on the table.