Review of Happy Endings (2014) by Laura D — 29 Dec 2005

Haven't really updated this much lately, things have been pretty active lately. Been visiting friends a lot, going to BBQs and the like. It's been a good couple of weeks. This evening I was invited to go and watch [i]Happy Endings[/i] with a group of friends, so I toddled along.

I had pretty mixed expectations (after having read mixed reviews on RT) but I knew I liked some of the actors (Lisa Kudrow in particular) from previous work so I knew I would at least enjoy that aspect. Overall the film was much better than I expected. It was a bit gimmicky in parts but I found the stories riveting and the performances even more so. I love it when movies do that thing that makes me glue my eyes to the screen and really start caring about what happens to these people. Lisa Kudrow was outstanding, she has an incredible ability to meld comedy and drama, an aspect of her acting that [i]Friends[/i] never really showed but we have seen before in [i]The Opposite of Sex[/i]. It's also great to see her further demonstrate her range post-[i]Friends[/i] as a kind of reminder that she's still an excellent actress even if the last few seasons of [i]Friends[/i] were patchy. She is the core of the film but other excellent performances in [i]Happy Endings[/i] came from Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold, Steve Coogan and Jesse Bradford, among others. The acting is the stand out feature of this film and is pretty much uniformly top-notch. The screenplay is well above average, and certainly one of the better from the not-very-many films I've seen this year, but occasionally sags a bit. Similarly, the direction seems to lose a bit of focus every now and then which mildly detracts from the overall product.

[i]Happy Endings[/i] was a very enjoyable film and I was surprised with how riveting it was. I enjoyed the dark humour and drama but it was the performances by the amazing cast that really drew me in.