trailer break: ‘What Goes Up’ (formerly titled ‘Safety Glass’)

I heard “Hilary Duff” and “Steve Coogan” and I’m not sure what I thought -- maybe something along the lines of Hamlet 2 -- but I’m pretty certain I did not think, “Serious drama about adolescence and tragedy and grief and sadness and other not-comedy stuff.” Or at least, that’s what the trailer makes this film look like. Maybe it’s funnier than it looks here (Hamlet 2 was sadder than its trailers made it look).

If the typeface used for the title and credits looks kinda 80s, that’s deliberate. Though you can’t tell from the trailer, the film is apparently set around the launch of the space shuttle Challenger in Christa McAuliffe’s hometown -- she seems to be the “local hero” Coogan’s editor mentions. I’ll be very curious to see how delicately the film handles that angle: it has the potential to be very uncomfortable indeed.

What Goes Up opens in the U.S. on May 29; no U.K. release date has been set yet.