Review of Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) by Ed Fucking H — 29 Aug 2010

I recently made my first foray into the work of Mike Leigh when I saw his 1993 film 'Naked.' Within 5 minutes of that movie I had known that I had found a new favourite, and I looked forward to seeing the rest of this director's films. This was the one I followed it up with and I have to admit it was a bit of a disappointment, though not a complete failure either.

Here's the thing the main character in Naked was such an unlikeable character at first, but the acting was done with such sincerity that you sympathized with him, and even related to him in certain aspects, regardless of his generally anti-social and mean spirited behaviour. What we get here is a character that is entirely TOO 'Happy Go Lucky' as the title suggests. It is impossible to feel anything for this character because real people simply don't act this way. I get the parallels being made between the women and her grumpy and bitter driving instructor, and how their both using this exaggerted front, to mask their true feelings, but I just don't care about the protagonist here. She is far too annoying, unrelatable and unbeleivable to the audience (errr... to me atleast) to be taken seriously in any respect. That's not to say her acting is bad, I just didn't need to see a 2 hour movie based around this character.

It wasn't ALL bad though. Eddie Marsan was great as the disgruntled driving instructor and I did find myself chuckling during his scenes with Sally Hawkins, but the rest of the movie just left me bored. The film isn't bad per se, just not my cup of tea and I still look forward to seeing more of Mike Leighs films, but I think I should have seen a few of his earlier films before jumping into this one.