La felicità porta fortuna - Happy Go Lucky

This film is about a London school teacher who is constantly happy, and even childish.

I was hoping "Happy Go Lucky" would at least be a feel good happy movie. With this expectation, I was devastatingly disappointed by what I saw. Poppy is a person who does not take anything seriously. Instead of being cute and comical, she comes across as being very annoying and even offensively stupid at times. She and her friends engage in tireless and pointless conversations, making the whole film really boring. The driving instructor is unlikeable as he is uptight and rigid, but his scenes are the comparatively most captivating out of the whole film.

I don't see the reason for the rave reviews for this film. It's ever so boring and irritating.

Having read some critiques to the extent that this was a film about a naive, childish woman who refused to take life seriously, I was hesitant whether I'd be able to bear this movie.

Luckily, it turned out to be one of the most entertaining cinema experiences since quite a long time.

Poppy isn't the person refusing to become an adult which her misanthropic driving instructor Scott accuses her to be. Our time indeed seems to bring about such people but they could hardly be more different than this lovely young woman. The first scene, with the girls drunk and chatting nonsense, is perhaps a bit misleading on this issue. (In fact, several people left the cinema during this scene, seemingly annoyed of all the giggling.) Rather, Poppy is wise and strong, trying to see the positive in everyone and everything. Humour, and sometimes benign derision, are her ways of keeping sulkiness out of her life. But, as everyone with a heart should feel, that is a gift, not a deficit. What damage can it cause to have a nice word or a smile for your fellow humans? On the other hand, she doesn't shut her eyes on the sad sides of life, such as a traumatized homeless man or a boy beaten by his mother's new partner, and one understands that she is deeply sad about not being able to help Scott, even if she would have had every reason to simply hate him for his bad temper, his racism and his stalking.

The director has done a superb job with this production; it is packed with intelligent, witty dialogs and convincingly drawn characters.

Our world needs a lot more people like Poppy, or at least -- if they don't possess her strength and optimism -- people who are sympathetic with her values instead of feeling threatened by humaneness. Yes, life is difficult and often sad, so let's tackle it with a smile!

I think most of us know a person who is perpetually happy and optimistic, and so annoyingly so that you resent them for being happy when you're not, and you consciously or unconsciously try to smash their rose-tinted glasses. I would add a "or maybe that's just me" but Happy-Go-Lucky is the story of such a person, and how she affects everyone around her.

Gawd, Poppy's annoying. This is quite the "love it or hate it" movie depending on whether you're more like her or like the angry and negative driving instructor she antagonizes with her cheerfulness. But as long as you can hold down the bile, it can be fascinating to watch her interact with the spectrum of people she encounters, since they all fall at various points between her and the instructor. From tolerant, to accepting, to nonchalant, to envious, they run the gamut and it's pretty easier to associate with one of them.

At first I thought Sally Hawkins' performance was going to be one shrill note throughout the movie, but no, there are fortunately moments of quiet drama too. In any case, I have to admire someone who can act so constantly cheerful without any traces of irony. I find Mike Leigh's movies quite hard to sit through, since they're usually about people and their interactions, and to appreciate the movies you have to strive to understand their people. Patience and understanding are not qualities I have in copious amounts; I generally prefer characters that I automatically empathize with.

This movie is a rare oddity in that it annoyed me and yet it was still a good watch. It's a movie that I would recommend to people but lordy, I don't wanna watch it again.

In Camden, the elementary school teacher Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins) is a very optimistic thirty year-old smiler that has been sharing a flat with her girlfriend and also teacher Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) for ten years. When her bicycle is stolen, Poppy decides to have driving lessons in the Axle School of Motoring with the rude, bigoted and bitter instructor Scott (Eddie Marsan). Meanwhile she has trouble with her back in the trampoline and she decides to take classes of Flamenco dance with a Spanish teacher. When her pupil Nick (Jack MacGeachin) bullies other students, Poppy feels that the boy is having troubles at home and asks for the assistance of the social worker Tim (Samuel Roukin) and they start to date each other. However her attitude of happiness and joy is misinterpreted by Scott.

"Happy-Go-Lucky" is a simple movie of Mike Leigh with one of the sweetest and most beautiful characters I have ever seen. Sally Hawkins is simply fantastic performing a character that tries to bring smile to the world, and I loved her. The story discloses a couple of days in the life of this remarkable character that seems to be inspired in some of Frank Capra's characters. Her counterpoint is Scott, with a magnificent performance of the always effective Eddie Marsan. The winner of this duel is unfortunately the sadness and bitterness of Scott that shakes the happiness of Poppy in a realistic conclusion of this great little movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Simplesmente Feliz" ("Simply Happy")

When this film came out my girlfriend said she wanted to see it because she'd heard good things. After much time waiting for her to be in the mood for it, I eventually queued it up when by myself and I am glad I did as she would have truly hated this film. The plot (as light as it is) is about a 30-year-old woman who is as cheerful and perky as the day is long. She hangs out with her friends, she meets a guy, she learns how to drive and in all these things we see her infectious sense of happiness. There isn't much more to this and I do not thing I have seen a film that depends so totally on whether or not you like the main character.

I said she is infectious but then so are many diseases and to be honest I found Poppy to be as enjoyable. Her character is the type to speak to strangers, to constantly have a zany remark, to be the one making a spectacle of herself and so on. Of course her being the polar opposite of me didn't help, but I found nothing to make me question myself here and on the contrary I spent much of the film wondering if Polly isn't suffering from some sort of mental illness. The majority of the film sees Poppy in full-on zany mood, mostly in collaboration with others but occasionally contrasting her with a dull married couple and her driving instructor, who carries all of his anger with him all the time. When the film is letting Poppy just be herself I found it tiresome. As a character she says nothing real and everything is a little joke or witty episode. It is only the contrast where she comes out and I think there is really only one or two moments in the film where I felt a real person had come out of Poppy.

The cast are mixed and not in a goo way. Hawkins got lots of praise of this performance but I thought it was terrible. In one or two scenes she lets the façade drop so we see her at her most real. I loved these moments but the downside of them was that we then know the rest is a façade and not her really. Her acting involves cheeky mockney dialogue and little else. Marsan is much better. His rage and anger is convincing and his performance works well next to the moments when Hawkins is not OTT cheerful. The supporting cast is OK but really it is Hawkins' film and this is something to keep in mind.

Whether you like this film or not depends very much on liking Poppy. You may find her freewheeling color to be charmingly quirky but for me she used it as a barrier to any real discussion or humanity and she struck me as disingenuous throughout the film. The moments where she drops the wisecracks and zaniness and lets something like empathy or concern for others come through are great, but they are few and far between.