Sometimes, it's less the Ending than what's Before It

So as much as I thought CRASH was going to feel like a MAGNOLIA wannabe ... and was disappointed, I managed to experience that same outcome with HAPPY ENDINGS, yet another movie with an ensemble of stars whose lives criss-cross over each other, this time in a supposedly comic way. We know the film is a comedy because the side-titles (like subtitles but to the side of the picture) tell us so in a 'pop-up video' sort of convention which is less than consistent in it success rate. Writer/Director Don Roos likes to play with movie conventions... at least he did in his brilliant 1998 dark comedy THE OPPOSITE OF SEX starring Christina Ricci. He then turned in the unbelievably conventional BOUNCE with Affleck and Paltrow. HAPPY ENDINGS tries to capture some of that independent spirit of his first film (which by the way, features a great performance by Lisa Kudrow), in a more marketable story. Or stories rather. All of which are atleast as complicated in their own right as the one in THE OPPOSITE OF SEX.

This is one of the main issues with the movie, each storyline requires a lot of back story, and this is handled by the sidetitles, which immediately take us out of the scene and we miss dialogue and performances and have to spend time getting reacquainted to the scene when we are done reading, only to have another side title appear. For example, a scene near the opening of the movie with three new characters and new baby immediately side titles with something along the lines of 'Max has two mommies, they were trying use their friend Gil as a sperm donor but after a few monthes told him it wasn't working and got different sperm out of the sperm bank'... that's
a lot of information at the top of the scene. Where CRASH effortlessly handled everything we needed to know about a character in a few snippets of dialogue, Happy Endings gets burdened by it's own back story, where I actually ended up spending large parts of the movie trying to remember the character's histories as the story progessed.

Another major problem with HAPPY ENDINGS is that for a comedy, its not very funny. Some of the performances are amazing and very full of humor but often the situations are not... well, normal comedy situations. And they don't seem to be played for humor. When the side-titles keep telling us it's funny, it's almost as if the director is trying to convince himself.

Not that it isn't a movie worth seeing, Kudrow shows amazing depth of character as she continues to throw off the FRIENDS shackles of Phoebie. Jesse Bradford is very funny as her documentry-making blackmailer. Tom Arnold turns is a great subtle and serious performance as a widower looking for love. And Maggie Gyllenhall ... well, she's always great but this is the first time I've heard her sultry alto voice as she rises from karioke obscurity to lead a hapless band run by Tom Arnold's closeted son. And Bobby Cannavale (The Station Agent) turns another brilliant comedic performance as Javier, Kudrow's massuese/lover.

So it could have been a good movie, it's just very unfocused. And that can only be the fault of the director. No where is it more obvious than the ending, or rather endings of the movie which feel compelled to tie up every piece of the story and are dolled out endlessly over about 10 minutes.

I recommend this movie to fans of any of the above mentioned actors, people who are still recovering from BOUNCE, and people curious about how long your sperm can last in a bank. Rick's Rating: B-