Happy Endings
The latest 3/£5 Grouchos acquisition to be watched was Happy Endings.
At times it could be a bit of a slog at over 2 hours long, but it was well worth it in the end. It had a really unusual style. The introduction had the screen split in halves with textual detail of who was who and hints and explanation to plots at the side, this happened at sporadic points throughout the film and is how it finished with a where are they now?
section, which lately has only been used in really cheesy comedies. The other bizarre style change was during some of the sex scenes when the camera rotates so that both characters are vertical, quite strange.
The movie is comprised of three main plots, a brother and stepsister make up the real anchor of the story. One arc is about the stepsister, a second about the life of the stepbrother and a third which eventually interlinks with both of them. I was quite amazed by Lisa Kudrows acting. After seeing some of the other Friends actors films I wasn’t expecting much (yes Jennifer Anniston I am looking at you, Office Space and Derailed are your only decent attempts at acting and one of those you are a really minor character). She is superb in this. Steve Coogan plays basically a really weak Alan Partridge. Basically the same what I think is important, other people can get hurt but I’ll say what I feel
, having a partner means he has to scramble afterwards to clean up the mess but it wasn’t a real departure from Partridge. That’s not to say he is bad or typecast, far from it just that you could see hints of his main character there.
I looked at it with Kudrow and Coogan and thought the main genre of the movie would be the comedy aspect but it really wasn’t. There were funny parts but no laugh out loud moments that I can remember.
Well worth watching.