Hector e a Procura da Felicidade

"Simon Pegg" in a very sophisticated role, is taking us in a journey to discover happiness and its meanings.

The movie starts slowly giving us a brief idea about his life, the complications he faces, and the main motivation to start the search for happiness.

A good thing that you will get an answer, not a direct one, but your inner voice will be satisfied with the definitions given for happiness.

"Simon Pegg" acting is remarkable here, his soul is present in his actions and reactions, which made each scene runs smoothly. All other actors did great and the movie introduced them in a very brief way.

The movie is a very light comedy, you will keep smiling the whole time, and may be laugh out loud in few scenes.

The bad points mainly about the script and the plot, the events run from one point to another very quickly and some of the actions are not justified.

Finally, it's a good light philosophical movie, not comparable to "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", but they can be categorized together. You may feel bored a little bit especially in the first half of it but then enjoyment is guaranteed.

I'd decided on the title for this review before I learnt that the source material was a French novel. That explains a great deal. Hector and the... is a deeply felt, funny, moving, insightful and whimsical look at how we (fail to) make the best of life. The film makes its points adroitly, avoiding (sometimes barely but a miss is as good as a mile)maudlin sentimentality. It's liberally sprinkled with perfect one-liners, acute observations and star cameos but the glue that holds the whole thing together is the relationship between Hector and his girlfriend. It's heartrendingly real. The version that I watched was a full ten minutes shorter than the original runtime and I'd guess that the few dots that failed to join up as needed were a result of that USA audience edit. Another guess would lead me to give the full length cut an eight rather than a seven. Here's the deal. It's a feel-good movie for which you won't need a supply of sick bags. By the end, I felt... happier. Really!

Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014)

I suppose the title makes clear that this is a journey and that it has some pitfalls. I mean, there is no easy solution to the problem of finding happiness. Unless you find that you had it all along. Such is the potential here as Hector (the hilarious and versatile Simon Pegg) leaves his somewhat normal but semi-nice girlfriend in London to search the world for true happiness. Yeah, really.

So it's a fable, of course. No one does this quite so easily or with such lucky (and grossly unlikely) connections along the way. But the clichés of happiness, beginning with plain old rich decadence, and then Tibetan monks who have some sense of pure deep undecadent innocent joy. And then a whole series of alternative of people who have some part of happiness. Hector takes notes and keeps going, his girlfriend frustrated but materially distracted in their posh pad.

When things turn for the worse you know (since it's a fable) that it will not stay that way. New adventures arise.

But does he find happiness? Or is it, like Dorothy in Oz, a bit like you realize there is truly no place like home?

What makes this very fun, very unexpected romp worthwhile above all is the funny fun and sometimes very serious performance by Pegg. He's got a well known screen presence from the wacky comedies (like "Shawn of the Dead") and in a way he plays off of that here. But he also transcends it enough to make you believe there is more than meets the eye here. The whole movie is fun because he's fun to be with.

And will you learn a thing about what makes people happy? I hope not, because this is a stream of clichés without much or any insight. You can shout—hey, that's not the point— but it still leaves the movie a bit superficial.

It leaves it very fun, too, however, and all is quite well in the end. See it. It's quite cheerful.

This movie is a pure joy to watch and share with others...

But still more than a decent effort to find ones meaning of and in life. I saw someone calling it "Dudes version of Eat Pray Love". That's a funny way of putting it. And it's not that wrong. While it may appear like something more similar to Mr. Mitty (a really good movie about escaping real life in fact, but also finding oneself, through that way), it actually is more like the Julia Roberts movie (or book if you haven't seen the movie).

Simon Pegg is really good in this and he is surrounded by a stellar cast. Maybe watching this after "Gone Girl" will seem a bit weird, but that is up to the viewer to decide. I watched it before, so that didn't affect my experience. A decent story about life and appealing/inspiring to the viewer to maybe do something similar