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FTJ Sponsoring the Movie “The Upside” at the Grand Theater

By Christine Hall

FTJ is sponsoring the Movie “The Upside” at the Grand Theater on Saturday, February 11 at 10am and is free to seniors.  This film is part of the Grand’s Overcoming Adversity film series which is running for several months.

The Upside is a 2017 American comedy-drama film, a remake of the French 2011 film The Intouchables, which was itself inspired by the lives of Abdel Sallou and Philippe Pozzo di Borgo.  The film follows a paralyzed billionaire (Bryan Cranston) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a recently paroled convict (Kevin Hart) whom he hires to take care of him.  This is a true story that reveals that the real-life paragliding accident happened in the Savoyard reliefs of Mont Bisanne in the Swiss Alps in 1993 when Philippe was 42.  He had been distracted by thoughts of the workers he had laid off and hadn’t been paying enough attention to what he was doing.  As a result, he crashed.  It’s a comedic look at the relationship between a wealthy man with quadriplegia and an unemployed man with a criminal record who’s hired to help him.  The biggest message of “The Upside” is that we as human beings have a choice.  More specifically, we have a choice in how we perceive life, regardless of the hard times we have experienced.  Hart’s character is an example of the person who makes the decision to make the best of his life.  Nicole Kidman, Golshifteh Farahani and Julianna Margulies also star.