Happiness

Masterful.

It is not a film for most people. It is certainly for adults only. But it shows Todd Solondz as a filmmaker who deserves attention, who hears the unhappiness in the air and seeks its sources. more

Take the safety off of the comedy Magnum called Happiness and put the barrel in your mouth. You'll laugh your ass off as it takes off the back of your head...It could be the best film of the year. At the very least, I'll never forget it. more

Like David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson, Solondz revels in ironic pop passion. It's a signature moment when he transforms Air Supply's "All Out of Love" into a geek-love rhapsody. more

A masterpiece. more

Unnerving because it forces us into uncharted waters: Solondz doesn't tell us how to feel but makes us thrash out our responses for ourselves. In doing so, he has made one of the few indelible movies of the year. more

Weaving many interconnected plot lines and more than a dozen lives together, this gifted writer-director has fashioned a bleak, brilliant comedy about loneliness, lovelessness, and alienation--a film that constantly upends our assumptions about what is heartbreaking, what is hilarious, and what is both. more

A brilliant, disturbing, but unstable and half-crazy piece of work. more

Thoroughly realized characters and relationships and Solondz's masterful ability to switch the tone from comic to tragic within the same scene help make Happiness a better film than it might have been otherwise. Much better, in fact. more

It has taken only two films, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and now Happiness, for Todd Solondz to establish his as one of the most lacerating, funny and distinctive voices in American film. more

If you want human misery, suffering, and inexplicable anxiety, this is the film for you. A web of relationships, some family, some neighbors, some friend of a friend, all intermingle to form the story of each individual's quest for happiness. The cast consists of actors who you wouldn't think could emphasize such pathetic struggles, but make surprising turns. Special mention to Jon Lovitz, who opens the film as the dejected date of Joy (Adams). His pitiful nature and sober appearance was one of the most nerve wrenching things I have ever seen on film. Each character has an air of... more

There are many good parts in this film - namely the dialogue and performances. The opening break-up scene, Bill's explanation of his pedophilia as "making love," Kristina's confession about her crime of passion. Jane Adams, Dylan Baker, and Camryn Manheim are all quite impressive. My main gripe is that there are no shades of meaning. Everyone's "problems" or "pursuits of happiness" are so extreme, except perhaps Billy's. The characters and circumstances seem too cooked for the sake of dysfunctional hip. more

A very twisted comedy. It dares go where the majority of films would fear to tread. However somehow it doesn't come off as offensive. It perfectly captures the misery of each character and the strange ways in which they search for their own Happiness. more

This is a very difficult movie that varies quite a lot in quality. At times I found it to be brilliant, but at other times I found it repugnant. It chooses to take on too many postmodern ideas and in doing so sacrifices a lot of integrity. The performances are pretty excellent all around - it's worth seeing because of that, but this is still an unjustifiably difficult movie at times and the director made several bad choices. Worth watching, once. more

The subjects of this film exist not for the benefit of a moral statement, but for a unified and deeply upsetting portrait of loneliness. Todd Solondz writes his characters like he writes the rest of the script... that is, with disregard for convention. That's what makes this movie work. Its incorporation of several genres is exciting, but it is never at the forefront of its appeal. As a dissertation of relationships between desperate people, this is a powerful and important film. The depravity and moral abyss at the core of it all is what sets it apart from a typical ensemble piece more... more

This is a film about people who are all very unhappy for one reason or another. Their lives entwine, and where it would usually be some Wes Anderson, crappy, indie-fest, the talent and the strength of the characters raise it. It does drag in places and it suffers from a lack of plot, but you won't see another film where you're laughing one minute and looking away the next. Except maybe Borat. Not that this is anything like Borat, at all. more