| Dark satirical look at humans |
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| written by MrEricSir |
March 14, 2005 - 9:46 PM PST |
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4 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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Now that I've seen Happiness, when I read reviews of the film I'm always disappointed. Critics typically go on about the acting, the subject matter, the true-to-life suffering... but seem to ignore a basic fact -- this film is hilarious!
It could be most folks don't share my sense of humor, and that's fine. However, if you enjoy dark (yet realistic) comedies and shocking films which stomp down one taboo after the next, rent this film immediately. Trust me.
I should mention I haven't seen any of Solondz's other films, but I hear this one's his best and I don't doubt it. I don't think he could top this one. |
| Painful Pleasure |
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| written by sfspaz |
January 13, 2004 - 3:06 PM PST |
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4 out of 4 members found this review helpful
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It is easy, yet foolish, to write this movie off as "sensationalist", as many did. While my first viewing led me to this conclusion, subsequent viewings revealed a movie so rich in emotional subject matter and so unblinking in its desire to reveal the secrets we work to avoid that one is hard pressed not to regard it as a tour de force.
The acting is breathtakingly vivid and deft - from Lara Flynn Boyle as the bored and self-absorbed beauty to Jane Adams' futilely optimistic loser sister, Dylan Baker's tortured father with pedophiliac leanings to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's agonized but loveable masturbating oaf, the performances are first-rate.
The subject matter, as many have mentioned, is enough to make the most hardened urbanite squirm, but Solondz navigates the viewer through such scenes slowly and gingerly, exposing his motivation as contemplation of these painful issues, not exploitation of them. Beyond this, Solondz has a way of frosting his most painful moments with a humor which, albeit incredibly dark, ameliorates somewhat his brutal subject matter.
Not to be miseed, and not to be viewed only once.
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| Altmanesque Miracles |
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| written by dwhudson |
September 1, 2002 - 1:23 PM PDT |
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19 out of 20 members found this review helpful
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If Robert Altman's cultural make-up hadn't been pretty much made up in the 60s (both pre- and post-hippie), if he'd been born and raised in an age of air-quoted irony instead, proud to wear an overtly conspicuous nerdiness on his sleeve, when the mid-to-late 90s came along, he'd probably have made movies something along the lines of Todd Solondz's Happiness, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia or Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. Except that he might not have, since the real Robert Altman wouldn't have preceded him.
Consciously or not, each of those three filmmakers seems to have decided at some point to an Altman movie. Almost like a rite of passage. A fiercely independent, personal Altman movie, to be sure, but remarkably similar in structure and theme. You've got the cast, which people tend to think of as an ensemble, though you rarely have more than two or three members of it acting in the same room at any given time. You've got the pace of one scene setting the tone for the next. And you've got your running motifs: social and familial dysfunctionality (though interestingly, all three of our younger directors make a point of including incest in the catalog of dysfunctions and I can't recall it coming up with Altman offhand), but above all, deep, gaping, tangibly painful loneliness.
Of the post-Altman three -- Happiness, Magnolia and The Royal Tenenbaums, all of which I personally like loads, even though the intentional, look-at-me eccentricity all around can be grating -- Happiness, IMHO, is the most accomplished. Magnolia is thrilled with its own movieness (not a bad thing!), the camera swirling and seemingly never settling down, the musical number, the frogs and so on; The Royal Tenenbaums is a stylized fairy tale (also not a bad thing!) with its saturated colors and brothers sailing around and around the world and so on.
Happiness is the most rooted in reality, and what a stark, gruesome reality it is. I don't think I am ever going to forget looking into Dylan Baker's hauntingly innocent face, shot through as it is with denial and demonic intentions, all at the same time. The isolated, out of shape and just out of it computer guy could have been such a dull cliché if Philip Seymour Hoffman hadn't bared the underbelly you didn't even know was there. I could go on. The cast is astounding. Hell, the casting is astounding (Louise Lasser!). And Todd Solondz has worked miracles, all the more miraculous because they come off so frank and unmiraculous. |
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