Camila Mendes has been somewhat of a (pretty successful) teen queen. Her debut was, of course, as Veronica Lodge in Riverdale, CW’s brave and addictive take where Archie, Betty and Jughead tackle being teenagers in a town that is rife with sinister happenings and blood-thirsty criminals. She followed it up with Do Revenge, a Netflix thriller, where she played a sociopath.
To now see Mendes, who at 29 is well past the age to play a teenager, walk on the opposite end and lend herself to a rom-com like Upgraded, is a home run. Does Upgraded score as much? The answer is yes and no.
The ‘yes’ belongs to Mendes’s screen presence which lifts the largely mediocre material of this Prime Video film directed by Carlson Young. It also belongs to Marisa Tomei. The Oscar-winning actress — playing an insufferable boss here — is a hoot in more ways than one. The gold standard for the talon-sporting, sneering toxic boss has been Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada, and while Tomei’s Claire looks and feels like Priestley having a bad hair day, she manages to make the character her own.
The film starts with the promise of a romantic comedy but branches out into various genres — workplace drama, coming-of-age tale, self-discovery story — with mixed results. Through all of it, Mendes — who also lends her weight as executive producer — is a luminous presence, playing a doe-eyed intern but not a babe in the woods.
Mendes plays young Ana, a fine arts graduate who lands herself an internship in an upscale auction house. Like Anne Hathaway’s Andie in The Devil Wears Prada, Ana is determined to make good of the opportunity because she doesn’t want to go back to her hometown Tampa and sell paintings of boats to senior citizens.
Even while she slogs it out at work — Claire’s caustic tongue hardly catches a break — Ana is also an unwelcome futon crasher in the one-bedroom apartment shared by her sister Vivian (Aimee Carrero) and fiance Ronnie (Andrew Schulz). The two hardly understand art, with Ronnie claiming that Ana’s degree in art is comparable to his “master’s degree in king-fu movies.” That is a rather long-winded way to say that it is useless.
Ana’s luck, however, looks up when she is sent off on a work trip to London. An upgrade to business class — hence the title of the film — makes her meet young and handsome scion Will (Archie Renaux). Before long, the two get talking — who hasn’t dreamt of meeting an ‘interesting’ co-passenger on a long-haul flight — and sparks fly. The only problem? Will thinks Ana is Claire. Romance follows, and so does heartbreak.
Bursting at the seams with the usual genre tropes, Upgraded, however, makes for a semi-breezy watch. The conflict is interesting and though Mendes and Renaux have to work a fair bit on their chemistry, the film cruises along, even though it throws up no surprises. Upgraded benefits from some of its storybook inspirations — Ana’s journey from the bottom of the heap to the top echelons has its echoes in Cinderella’s story. One only wishes the film had a wee bit more magic.
Priyanka Roy
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