Where do you begin with a movie like Happiness? For starters, I would not recommend watching this on a plane. The performances were mostly fantastic, but there were two scenes in the first hour that made me switch to something more suitable for the environment.
Happiness is called a black comedy. There is some comedy involved but I think the black is doing the heavy lifting in that category. Holy smokes, it deals with some subject matter that can make people quite uncomfortable, including myself. I mentioned the performances being great, but the actors are playing some really vile and horrible people that do some abhorrent things while the cheeriest music is playing in the background. It's a unique experience.
After the first hour and the scene with Phillip Seymour Hoffman engaged in masturbation while dialing random numbers and then with Dylan Baker engaged in something similar with a magazine that should never be used for that purpose, I hated this movie. I hated the people. I hated the story. I'm glad I took the break and returned to it, because between my first session on the plane and finishing the movie I read a quote from Roger Ebert. The full quote can be found below, but essentially the message was "the movies are like a machine that generates empathy." Happiness gave me an opportunity to see a filmmaker exploring these people and by me watching it I got to understand the crazy people who share this voyage around the blue marble we call home. I still hated them, but I better understood them.
My rating reflects that. I can't say it's great, but it is interesting. I also will never watch it again so long as I live.
"We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are. Where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We are kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people, find out what makes them tick, what they care about. For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them."
I didn’t particularly enjoy the film I guess. The cast did a well with their performances but the subject matter, characters, and resolution just wasn’t there for me.
This movie was a real gem. From the long view it is a dark, dark (and I mean DARK) comedy masquerading as a drama. In reality it is a motley collection of characters that appear to be really "out there" but in reality might be closer to people we know than we think. The film had quite a few laughs and towards the end there might be the funniest four words ever uttered in a movie that I've reviewed. I absolutely howled, not necessarily because of the words (they are disturbing) but because of the timing.
it's kinda like 'american beauty' but way darker and funnier than that
Dark comedy drama. Also a gross out and sex comedy but instead of cheap physical jokes (ok one at the end) and loud characters it has a quiet vulnerability and painful tender moments. This quiet and dramatic acting along with dialogue that's directly painful but worded simplistically and sometimes silly gives a funny effect. Obviously the subject matter isn't funny itself but the delivery is. When the jokes over it's instantly back to thinking of what happened and how screwed up these people are. It's a gripping cycle.
I like the effort this movie makes to be different in its comedy style yet didn't go they way of sacrificing realism.
The themes are pretty taboo. It definitely goes into bizarre territory.
This was supposed to be a dark comedy but I didn't chuckle or laugh once. I was super uncomfortable and grossed out the whole time. I genuinely hope that one day I can completely forget about this awful movie and never think or hear about it again.
Here's Todd Solondz making me laugh at the cruelest things once again. I think this is a better, more ambitious effort than Welcome to the Dollhouse, even with a lot of the artistic traits carrying over. It's clear that he loves exploring the hidden tragedy of everyday life, deconstructing societal norms and performative behaviour. With this film in particular, all the vignettes add up to a study of dysfunctional individuals unable to find the happiness they're looking for. It's essentially Magnolia for people with a messed up sense of humor. Solondz directing carries a lot of personality; often juxtaposing his dark themes with fun, upbeat music and satirizing the behaviour of his characters through brilliant acting and dialogue. It's quite an achievement how he gets every actor to deliver such perfect performances, given how specific the tone of the bigger piece is. Yet for as visionary as this film is as a whole, his camerawork and lighting continues to be bland. The sets and use of colour are slightly more interesting than Welcome to the Dollhouse, but a lot of this doesn't look much better than your average 90s sitcom. It's a shame, because I genuinely think it could've been a masterpiece with a sharper visual sense.
7.5/10
From a period in time that bought you Seinfeld, Breakfast Club, and Philip Seymour Hoffman Happiness strings out some vignettes into almost 2 and a half hours in a way that didn't work for me
Truly enjoyed this movie. The actors are great, and I found the movie hilarious. Highly recommend!
Shout by d2freakVIP 4BlockedParent2024-01-19T18:01:54Z
This could have (she should have) been so much better. I understand it's a black comedy, and I admit that it was very unsettling at times, but it's just so much in this that simply doesn't land.