Not Another Happy Ending

Everyone has to admit that its originality makes this one of the best movies of all time. It will always be one of my favorites. Silly but fun, it is the story of what happens when a struggling publisher discovers his only successful author is blocked he knows he has to unblock her or he's finished. From an artistic standpoint, there were some plot elements and character developments I didn't think were totally needed. They do however drive the story, which seemed to be their purpose, so I can accept them. God bless this film. The acting is very effective. This is the kind of film that proves that a small story can be much more meaningful than a larger one.

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 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.

Why do so many rom-coms rely on preposterous premises? When they work (rarely, such as in Sliding Doors) the overall feel of the film can overcome its shortcomings. In this case, without it's female lead it would be pretty much unwatchable. I liked the idea of Jane's protagonist, Darcie, dogging her during the writer's block, but this was too underplayed and could have provided a lot more comedy than it did. The male lead character lacks all credibility and Stanley Weber's performance is mind-numbing. Otherwise, the supporting characters are badly drawn and barely justify their screen time. In particular the male support to Weber, supposedly a secondary school teacher is laughable, in all the wrong ways (how did he manage to get hold of a taxi?), while Jane's sleazeball, mistaken love interest (Willie) is stereotyping at it's worst. Karen Gillan carries the film on her own, and it's worth watching just for her performance. In the end the overall feeling is that there was a much better film trying to get out. Continuity and editing weren't much good either, but nice locations. Curiosity point: interesting to see non-sexualized nudity actually justified by the plot.

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.