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09/08/09
What Goes Up (2009)
11
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:3
Rotten:24
Average Rating:3.2/10
Consensus: What Goes Up squanders the charisma of Steve Coogan with a lazy screenplay, contrived plotting, and overall poor production.
Synopsis: WHAT GOES UP (formerly titled Safety Glass) is a film about a morally challenged New York reporter, Campbell Babbitt (Steve Coogan), who learns life lessons from a group of dysfunctional students... [More]
Starring: Steve Coogan, Hilary Duff, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby
Director: Jonathan Glatzer
Reviews for What Goes Up
An epic dramedy of teenage angst that is too much drama and not enough comedy for Steve Coogan's good.
06/15/09
The film opens chaotically, perhaps randomly, and it never finds its proper footing. Most movies take their sweet time to reveal incompetence. What Goes Up boldly advertises it within the first 60 seconds.
06/10/09
What Goes Up is an earnest morality tale. It's very uneven, but it also seems sincere.
06/06/09
About as cruddy as a cruddy little indie can get, especially given a cast that should've known better.
06/05/09
The whole thing feels like a premeditated attempt at a Sundance sensation, a mix of cast members (and ideas) from Juno and Hamlet 2 spiced up with the now obligatory '80s references.
06/05/09
Director and co-writer Jonathan Glatzer handles his talented cast well, and the movie is dark, droll and sentimental in roughly the correct proportions.
06/05/09
I never know quite what they were saying about heroism and then there are all these unanswered questions.
06/01/09
The film really struggles to find its voice and to find purpose and meaning.
06/01/09
Has a charismatic performance by Steve Coogan, but that's not nearly enough to save it from drowning from its bland, awkward and lazy screenplay that fails to generate any real laughs or palpable dramatic tension.
05/31/09
A rambling, self-serious and chronically unfocused look at ’80s-era small town America and the socio-psychological anguish of disaffected youth.
05/29/09
[Director] Glatzer aims to wring laughter out of this desperation but succeeds only in producing a series of contrived characters and situations that make The Breakfast Club look like an unfiltered documentary.
05/29/09
Top CriticAn unusually subdued Coogan does his best, but this is the kind of pretentious nonsense he usually satirizes.
05/29/09
Mr. Coogan doesn’t seem altogether comfortable with his part, which, like the story, undergoes a number of unconvincing changes.
05/29/09
Top CriticSuch a confused, convoluted, odd piece of cinema that I almost recommend seeing it just because it is so very unusual.
05/29/09
a mess of a movie
05/28/09
While it’s often as amateurish as it is assured, Glatzer and writer Robert Lawson want to convey so much that the sheer breadth of the movie means they hit a few of their targets.
05/28/09
If What Goes Up is what we can expect in the post-Juno era of alt-dramedy programming, then burn, Indiewood, burn!
05/28/09
Muted and never moving, instead finding no insight while dragging its feet along a variety of forced quirks.
05/28/09
With its flat-footed script and poor production values, What Goes Up is a movie to be endured rather than enjoyed.
05/27/09
Latest News for What Goes Up
June 14, 2009:
Trailer & Poster review 
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May 28, 2009:
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