Review: HAPPINESS

DEPRESSING ‘HAPPINESS’

(reviewed on video)

    The best possible thing I can say about Todd Solondz’s “Happiness” is the fact that you have never seen anything like it before. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on what kind of a person you are (soccer mom’s look away!).
    The 2 hour 19 minute film centers around three sisters in New Jersey. One is a lonely loser, one a popular man-friendly writer, and one a normal housewife. The film weaves in and out of each sister’s life, centering mostly on the sisters’ surroundings: the guy next door, the husband, the kid, the parents, etc.
    “Happiness” shuffles along a snail-crawl pace, going from character to character, each one looking for happiness in their life. There’s no real main plot, just character stories that seem like they were only written for shock value.
    Todd Solondz wrote and directed the indie-hit “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, a film about High School. He garnered even greater reviews for this, his sophomore feature, and here’s why: it’s shocking. Even for me it was kind of shocking. A perfect suburban father who happens to be a…pedophile. A regular overweight neighbor who happens to be a…murderer. A normal baseball playing kid who is desperately trying to…cum.
    The critics who did love this film probably had just watched ‘Urban Legend’, ‘What Dreams May Come’, and ‘Bride of Chucky’, and then saw this which is a 180 degree turn. It’s a definite anti-Hollywood film. It’s unrated and disturbing and creates comical situations from sickening scenarios.
    Critics liked it because it truly was independent. It was different from everything out there.
    So what did I think?
    Todd Solondz is a creative guy. There’s maybe 5 really great scenes here. All of the stories don’t work. The parent's story in Florida falls completely flat. The pedophile storyline and Lara Flynn Boyle’s sexually obsessed neighbor’s tale are great, but the others are stale. The film, for me anyway, shocks you more than entertains. It feels like Solondz had made his first feature and got such great publicity that he could really make any film and it would be made. So he created every disturbing thing he could think of and put it down on paper.
    I’m wondering what this clown is going to do for an encore. ** (out of ****)