Instead of deftly showing the information we need, the film inundates the audience with minutiae and sly comments that have little bearing on the film's action.
But she scraps her ditsy-girl act, and her damaged character exudes a vulnerability that her other work didn't allow her to explore.Īlso, throughout the film we get title cards explaining characters' back-stories, and this strikes me as lazy filmmaking. Of particular note is Lisa Kudrow, with whom I, a long-time Friends hater, have never been impressed. Romantic movies run the gamut: There are your classic dramas, like The Notebook, funny rom-coms, like Ali Wong and Randall Park’s Always Be My Maybe, and darker, more mysterious fare like the new Oscar-nominated animated film I Lost My Body, or the drama Like Water for Chocolate.Some have happy endings, some have sad endings, and some have Stanley Tucci. The way in which each of these actors commit to their characters makes the film almost believable. However, good actors can sometimes save bad writing. A lot of the critics' reviews of Happy Endings lamented the ludicrousness of its storylines, and from a writer's standpoint, I have to agree. In my sentence-summary of the film, I listed the most prominent plots, and if you think I'm being somewhat satirical, you're right. Sure, there are a couple moments that were chuckle-worthy, but that's about it. I write "dramatic" intentionally because even though the title cards and other sources identify this as a comedy, I saw very little humorous about its situations or delivery. Multiple intersecting stories, including plots about blackmail, stolen sperm, and a woman who fucks a gay drummer and his father, are at the center of this Robert Altman imitation.īy the end of this film, I thought that it had reached the Altman Standard in terms of its ability to cleverly combine these characters with some degree of dramatic effectiveness.