Happy Endings

My wife rented this yesterday and we watched it last night. I'd never heard of it. After watching about 15 minutes of it, I thought "What in the world is this," because it was so frenetic. As written in the summary, there are several stories simultaneously being told, and it's kinda hard to keep everything straight. But, after awhile it starts to come together and you begin to pull for one or another of the characters.

I've never watched "Friends," so I haven't seen Lisa Kudrow much, but this was a good performance as a girl who alternates between spineless and fed up. I hadn't seen much of the rest of the cast before, so I can't comment. I also think it's interesting that Tom Arnold was first known for being married to Rosanne Barr, but it seems that lately he's gotten many various supporting roles, enough so that I find myself thinking: "Yeah, he was married to Rosanne whats-her-name?" Anyway, I liked this movie.

Yes, it's bizarre, quirky, odd, whatever you want to call it, but it ends well. It's one to watch. One more thing: it has many spots where there is a black sidebar with kind of "footnote" information. I found myself eventually pausing the DVD to read these things, because I didn't want to miss the music and a bit of action that might be taking place. I wish they would have just paused the movie at these points, and they were worthwhile explanations. Thumbs up!

Filmmaker Don Roos brings a unique perspective to his films, and this omnibus 2005 film exemplifies his idiosyncratic style quite well. Even though it doesn't work in its entirety, it has a great ensemble cast and some really sharp observations about a loosely connected group of people who have in common a certain disassociation with the inner truths in their lives. In fact, the deceptive nature of the characters is the movie's leitmotif, and Roos crosscuts their interactions with helpful title cards that often explain their inner motivations for their actions.

There are three basic stories that constitute the film, which recalls the multi-layered, somewhat enervated spirit of Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" especially given the LA-based ennui both films portray with accuracy. The first story deals with step-siblings Mamie, who as a teenager, had a one-night stand with her stepbrother Charley. Years later, Mamie is an abortion clinic worker, while Charley, gay and partnered contently with Gil for five years, runs their long-dead parents' last remaining restaurant. Both siblings have their own storyline - Mamie meets Nicky, a grungy filmmaker who wants her to participate in a film about meeting someone from her past. However, she convinces Nicky to make another film entirely about her intermittent lover Javier's massage practice.

The second story revolves around Charley's obsession with the paternity of a son which their lesbian best friends have just conceived. This leads to unexpected revelations that backfire on Charley. The third story focuses on Otis, a closeted teenage drummer who works at Charley's restaurant. Otis meets Jude, a vagabond singer who favors Billy Joel ballads and beds Otis in order to have a place to crash. Once established in the palatial home, she also attaches herself to Otis's divorced father Frank. It all sounds complicated and sometimes feels quite erratic, but Roos makes the film intriguing to watch.

The acting certainly helps. As Mamie, Lisa Kudrow again shows how she can use her somewhat flaky persona in an arresting way that can be funny and heartbreaking. Steve Coogan effectively brings out Charley's neuroses, while Jesse Bradford is convincingly suspect as Nicky. The underutilized Laura Dern doesn't really have much to do as one-half of the lesbian couple (Sarah Clarke is the other half), while Bobby Cannavale gamely brings out the swarthy gamesmanship of Javier. Jason Ritter (the look-alike son of the late John Ritter) plays Otis with the right amount of confusion and anxiety. As the bonhomous Jude, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Jake's sister) gives a shrewd performance that never borders on the obvious, while Tom Arnold surprises with a subtle turn as the comparatively innocent Frank.

The DVD has an alternate commentary track with Roos, Kudrow and cinematographer Clark Mathis, as well as ten deleted scenes of varying quality and three scenes that constitute the lacking gag reel. During the final film's lengthy 128-minute running time, there are scenes that seem to drift with no reason and character motivations that go unexplained. Regardless, the film is definitely worth seeing.

Don Roos wrote and directed this lively, sometimes poignant, but not especially funny comedy-drama centering around an abortion counselor's secret that she had given birth to her step-brother's baby when she was a teenager and quickly gave it up for adoption. In this role, Lisa Kudrow really excels with the writer-director's dryly observant style: she's loose but not flailing, inquisitive but not harping, apprehensive but not frightened. Kudrow (whose comic timing reminds one of Roseanne's in the early years of her TV sitcom) mixes a look of anxiety, despair, nervousness and anticipation with astonishing skill--even when her character is humiliated (or humiliates herself), Kudrow has a way of keeping all the flightiness grounded in some form of reality. Matching her, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tom Arnold have some wonderful early scenes; she's a born user and a killer karaoke singer, while he plays the father of the gay 21-year-old drummer whom Gyllenhaal has already seduced and discarded. It's too bad we don't get more of this relationship, and also unfortunate that Roos covers up most of their dialogue with soundtrack music (it's a coupling which happens in montage). Roos plants little subtitles throughout the movie to help sort out who's-who, and this works to some degree (yet it's a relief when the device is momentarily given a rest). Some of the other story threads are dim (a couple of which center on gay men turning their homosexuality on and off like a light-switch), but Kudrow's work and Tom Arnold's natural, easy-going presence keep the film absorbing and often appealing. And nobody sings "Just the Way You Are" like Gyllenhaal. **1/2 from ****

Vignettes are a tricky business. To make a film with more than three main stories to follow that interconnect and are unified in some significant way is a challenge. "Love, Actually" is one of the only recent films to successfully pull this off, using Christmas and love as a unifying factor. Don Roos' "Happy Endings" uses ... love? happiness? sexuality? infatuation? It's not clear, and making all the vignettes cross-connect with each other doesn't satisfy what we look for in these movies. Each vignette should essentially tell the same message in a different way. "Happy Endings" has several original concepts, but the connection is obscure and hard to draw.

Roos ("The Opposite of Sex") essentially tells three stories: First follows Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) and the documentary she helps aspiring filmmaker Nicky (Jesse Bradford) make about her masseuse/lover Javier (Bobby Cannavale) so that she can find out information Nicky has of the son she gave away at birth when she was 18. The second follows the father of that child, Charlie (Steve Coogan), who is now gay and convinced that his partner (David Sutcliffe) is the biological father of their lesbian friends' son, whom he donated sperm to once and it supposedly didn't work. Last is Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a free spirit who meets Otis (Jason Ritter), a young man that works in Charlie's restaurant who is hiding his homosexuality from his rich father (Tom Arnold). Jude promises Otis that she won't say anything if he doesn't spoil her plan to become involved with his father for the money.

That mostly covers the labyrinthian complexity of "Happy Endings," which despite it's courage to choose such unique scenarios , doesn't seem to ever make clear sense. It's all quite interesting, as this is relationship drama we've never seen before, but there are a lot of emotions flying around and motivations that seem to lack sources. It probably all made sense in Roos' head, but it doesn't convert.

The acting talent isn't necessarily lacking either. This is the best performance I've ever seen Kudrow give in a film -- she reminds me of another Annette Bening. Gyllenhaal is also one of the more complex (in the intriguing way) characters and she draws the widest variety of emotions from the audience as she crosses a fine line between sincerity and deception. Although the characters are interesting, however, we mostly feel just apathy because the snippets we get of them are more puzzling than revealing.

Another unique technique that Roos employs is adding subtitles that give away little pieces of information about the characters as we watch them, whether it's what happens in the future to them or a secret they have. It's supposed to add a unique twist to what's being shown on screen, but it's hard enough to make sense of what's going on on screen as it is. It's not a bad idea, but it just saturates this film even more.

Watching vignettes interconnect is always entertaining and interesting, but "Happy Endings" is overstuffed and it creates a disconnect between the characters and the audience, which no amount of character interconnectedness can solve.

I rented this film out of brotherly love, and it actually starts with a very different act of brotherly love as well...but not the good kind. I didn't even realize this was the director of The Opposite of Sex until discussing this with a friend.

Anyways, I don't find this to be a comedy, as it is as bemusing as it is amusing. Roos does give a handful of actors chances to go over the top, which works while also giving this a sort of sitcom feel. At the same time, touching upon people's need to have some dirt, or special secret in their lives and using the old movie-in-a-movie trick makes certain this isn't a film that was knocked out as poorly as Mamie (often pronounced Mommy it seemed to me) was knocked up.

The film is a celebration of quirkiness, which thanks to avoiding clichés works okay for me. It actually drew my wife in to watching it with its sort of soap operatic maneuvers. Although the series of false endings, then more denouement, then another false ending she found maddening. She also was distracted by the text sidebars that give us an omnipotent wink as to what is going on, and in some cases completely undercut the dramatic tension going on. Just don't watch the film with subtitles on at the same time...

The idea of the quest for the lost son, as opposed to lost father also was interesting, but this film likes its characters more than its themes I suspect. Again, a sort of soap opera strength.

I recognized but could not place Jesse Bradford here, from his recurring stint on West Wing as a scion of political privilege. And same was true for Bobby Cannavale even goofier here than in the "Station Agent" Really the whole cast seemed to embrace their outlandish characters and I think that's this film's forte. Kind of like watching some nice juggling, and all the balls fall in place ultimately.

6/10