"Happy Endings" (2005) - Movie Review

“Happy Endings” starts off as a clichéd stereo typed deviance with a nice slicy touch of originality. Then it deviates further into seemingly diverse characters of confused state of realisms. And then they write summary side by side wherein we spend considerable time reading than to know the characters. But thankfully enough when it goes apart and we wait for its slow death, it revives so merrily and energetically to mould into a beautiful drifting emotions of vagueness, opinions, confusions, forgiveness and moving on.

It is supposed to be the trend to pick up the most dysfunctional and morally twisted characters as can be seemed in a society which makes to feel that way to make an emotional journey out of it. True that it works. It helps in identifying lot of unknown explanations and mixed feelings everyone has about Taboo and how to deal with it. It makes situations weird mainly due to the society structure and the way to be brought upon. More than that, it merely becomes a defense mechanism and an aversion technique to separate from others and in fact from themselves to face the truth. The film is an extension of those in a style of giving notes on the screen about the characters state, some history and may be some more. It was good at the start but began to feel that the director just wanted to do something different than achieve a creativity using that. I am not against it but the application of it gets over used and totally misplaced. There are moments where those makes good projection of the lot of events but director Don Roos could have toned it down.

The film revolves around various characters trying to live their regular life which totally appears bizarre. Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) is the one such who has completely lost herself during her nineteen years after an incident which made her to be so. Mamie sleeps with her step brother Charley (Steve Coogan) and got pregnant. There are situations and mistakes which are tough to be seen as something to be forgot upon. Some are so sharp and morally indigestible which might seem so perverted and ill fated. Even one with an open mind will hesitate and react befuddled. This is something I really liked about the movie is that we totally forget it along. The rest of the movie carefully frames itself away from Mamie and Charley that it becomes a small incident with some unknown foolishness attached to it. It becomes a foot note rather than the movie taking a toll on “how” they felt and their dealing with it. Mamie and Charley move on as they should and they realize the consequences of it. Some things are unexplainable but definitely resolvable with the help of our very good old friend called time.

Then what does the movie deal about? Well, there are lots of other characters whose intentions seem to be diabolical but lots of truths come out of it. It is either about the maker of those machinations or the victim itself. Victim might not be the word to describe them properly. There are no victims but lessons learned are high. It is process of acceptance, discovery and guilt. Maggie Gyllenhaal gives the best of all performances which is unique and convincing as Jude who takes advantage of single rich men and her “lessons learned”.

Frankly I started thinking about writing the review during the initial half an hour on how bad is this movie dealing with out of usual boring and uninteresting confused characters. They came up so well which may not make it the best movie but a very nice original attempt. There are conclusions and “happy endings” as they say. They seem to analyze deep inside everyone but they do not to tell the truth. There are unknown make ups and easily typed in sentences to make us feel good. It may not be as easy as they type it in on the screen. They do not try it to show it though. Yet they achieve their intentions of bringing some relief of content smiles in a movie which had all the elements of tragedy. At the same time the movie is out right serious from start to finish. The style seems comical but there is nothing funny. And the irony is that the emotions are crypts which are graced on top with no way of knowing the depth of it. The movie cleverly plays those to have them left cryptic. There is no open interpretation. But they achieve some plain level conviction towards opinions and judgments. “Happy Endings” does not have the soul but does justice to its title posing as an independent serious movie.