Buscando un Final Feliz

I watched Not Another Happy Ending due to my love for Karen Gillan. And the film was a perfectly serviceable, if unremarkable rom-com. There was a nugget of a story for a dark comedy where a publisher encourages an author by making them miserable and there were some cute moments that got a chuckle out of me like Jane (Karen Gillan) throwing a phone in the fridge. Gillan did show her star-power and comic timing in this film.

Jane Lockhart (Karen Gillan) is not a happy person. She hates her publisher Frenchman Tom Duval for changing the title of her book to Happy Ending. The book becomes a best seller. She reconnects with her estranged father Benny. Her boyfriend Willie Scott is writing the screenplay. Everything seems to be perfect but she can't finish her second book. She's stuck on Chapter 37. Her fictional protagonist Darsie starts hounding her. Tom fears her writer's block threatens his company. With his assistant Roddy, Tom tries to make her unhappy like before so she would finish her book. Her happiness is only on the surface and Tom finds himself falling for her.

I want Karen Gillan to get better material than this. This is not that funny. Any smile-worthy moments come from Karen being Karen. She's not really a comedian. She has some physical comedic skills but it's not enough. There are very few relationships with chemistry in this movie. The best one is probably the father daughter struggles. Gary Lewis is the only one doing any worthwhile acting. Stanley Weber is rather stiff and he doesn't have enough time with Gillan. They need more screen time together to develop that chemistry. On the other side, Henry Ian Cusick is playing a superficial villain. This is not good enough.

I could simply dismiss this movie as a formulaic rom-com that is neither particularly romantic nor comic, but that wouldn't really get into the problem with this movie. The problem is it feels phony from beginning to end. Everything about it is wrong. The main character dresses quirky, but there's no sense that this is who she is, or that she has a purpose in her choice of clothes. Instead, you feel someone on the movie just decided to dress her that way. The love interests actions are at best I-Love-Lucy-level nonsense at worst borderline sociopathic. It's also an absurdly stupid premise, and the movie knows it's a stupid premise and makes that clear, yet goes with it anyway.

Every turn in the plot feels like it's there not because it is a natural outcome of what came before but simply because the writer wanted to create a situation.

The performances are good. The movie looks good. And the movie effectively hits the basic rom-com pressure points. But its soulless and stupid, and unerringly goes for the trite moments and the fake emotions.

I did like the main characters alter-ego. She was a good actress and was actually more convincing than the supposed real people in the film. But overall this was not just dull, but downright objectionable.

I am a Karen Gillan fan, that is why I watched this movie on Amazon streaming. But a word of warning, there is a scene in her apartment where she is fully nude, someone had suggested writing while nude might be a cure for writer's block and she decides to try it.

In this movie she is Jane Lockhart, a writer with a first success and now under contract for the second book is having trouble finishing it. Gillan is of course superb, she is in everything she does. This is an entertaining movie right at 90 minutes long. Gillan was right about 25 when this movie was made.

I will keep it short and to the point:

Things I love:

Soundtrack

Karen Gillan

The location

The Romance

Writers life

Karen famous nude scene (nice ass by the way)

Things I don't love:

Feels long

Sometimes I can't understand the damn accent

Cliché scenes

The writers fans

Didn't fancy her dad

To conclude, the first stage was interesting to some extend but then it fell off thanks to the duration and the twist, by which time I stopped watching the movie and continued working, before going to bed I decided just to watch few more minutes and that's the end of it, from that point onwards I didn't stop until I finished it. I guess I rooted for the guy and really wanted a happy ending in the end. It's sort of emotional but none of the points worked for me, it was more like romance/comedy which is what I wanted to see. Karen is hot as always, got a sweet spot for her (dig red heads) I do like the lead and his style. I don't know this movie which worked for me and I actually feel a lot better after watching it.

I do recall saying HELL YEAH at the end and proclaiming my desire to meet someone like the lead or at least share what they had.

So, for me it was worth the watch.