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After Sara Sugarman and Darren Ripley you might have thought that SGRIN and The Welsh Arts Council would have had enough of camp, self effacing comedians - but no, despite its chocolate box wrapping, Phillipa Cousins debut effort fails to raise many laughs and succeeds in compounding negative welsh stereotypes. I suppose the success of Kevin Allen's cult hit Twin Town started this movement but I wish it would end, quickly.

On a more positive note, there are many promising elements in Happy Now. The locations have been well chosen and atmospherically photographed in cinemascope by Richard Greatrex. The sound design and music are also noticeably good.

In fact the production values as a whole make Happy Now feel like Hollywood. The strongest scenes include the cult sacrifice of a cat and the engagement of a local black magician to 'disappear' the films young protagonist . If only Happy Now had dropped its knowing self parody and tackled more seriously the darker ingredients of its story it might well have achieved its ambition be 'a Welsh Twin Peaks'.

This film was originally completed in 1998 but the end result was so long and so boring that I still found myself yawning whilst watching it on fast forward. It obviously didn't sell so the producers re-cut it and re-released it in 2000. However, I doubt this act of desperation can undo the tedious self indulgence of this amateur work.

The title of this film mislead me into thinking it would be an Irish 'Human Traffic' or 'SW7' but after the first ten minutes I realised I was sadly mistaken. Disco Pigs is a cross between an angst ridden, student film and a self indulgent fringe play that I had to force myself to sit through. It opens well, with a nicely photographed sequence in which real babies appear to act. The cast are promising and the young director has done a reasonable job given Enda Walsh's ill concieved script. But at the end of the day to a paying audience that want to be entertained, Disco Pigs is an ordeal to watch and I was surprised to see it was made by established producers Stephen Evans and Angus Finney and financed by the flush Rennaisance Films. How wrong headed can the establishment be to waste money on dross like this when there are plenty of other scripts and film-makers out there far more worthy . Films of a similar theme, but also successful are Sean Penn's 'She's So Lovely' , Peter Jackson's 'Beautiful Creatures' and Suri Krishnamma's 'New Years Day'.