Happy Endings
Donald Roos presents another ensemble cast
examing what motivates us in life and in the bedroom.
"Happy Endings" is a title with a double
meaning, as the film bears out. We begin in the present day with Lisa Kudrow
running down a street and getting hit by a car. We suddenly flash back to the
day she comes on to her stepbrother, gets pregnant, and goes for an abortion.
As it turns out, she never did get the abortion, but did give up the baby for adoption. She never tells her stepbrother, who turns out to be gay and happily ensconced with his lover Gil. Happily, until he becomes obsessed with the idea that Gil's lesbian pal Pam (Laura Dern) surreptitiously used Gil's sperm sample to get pregnant, resulting in her son Max.
Meanwhile, Nicky (Jesse Bradford) shows us to blackmail Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) into helping him make a film, using her adoption file against her. She and her boyfriend, of sorts, Javier, help him make a movie about Javier's work as a masseur who gives some female clients a "happy ending" massage.
Elsewhere, Jude (Magige Gyllenhaal) uses sex to get into the household of Otis, who is gay, so she can land his father (Tom Arnold).
Donald Roos, who came to some indie film fame with 1998's "The Opposite of Sex" continues to mull over how people operate and how sex affects it. Here, Nicky tells Mamie that she likes being the "woman with a secret," someone who appears one way but is really hiding something no one suspects. By the end of the film, it seems just about everyone has something they are hiding in the hopes of being more acceptable to someone else.
The film is quite enjoyable, and the various subplots and players all come together in the end in true screwball fashion. If there's one complaint about the film, it's the odd technique of having the screen suddenly cut in half with a storytelling titlecard. It gets overused quickly, although it does spare us some convoluted dialogue to explain histories and relationships. Most unessential is the use of this technique to tell us what's going to happen to these characters after the film is over.
[Seen at the Montgomery Cinemas.]
As it turns out, she never did get the abortion, but did give up the baby for adoption. She never tells her stepbrother, who turns out to be gay and happily ensconced with his lover Gil. Happily, until he becomes obsessed with the idea that Gil's lesbian pal Pam (Laura Dern) surreptitiously used Gil's sperm sample to get pregnant, resulting in her son Max.
Meanwhile, Nicky (Jesse Bradford) shows us to blackmail Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) into helping him make a film, using her adoption file against her. She and her boyfriend, of sorts, Javier, help him make a movie about Javier's work as a masseur who gives some female clients a "happy ending" massage.
Elsewhere, Jude (Magige Gyllenhaal) uses sex to get into the household of Otis, who is gay, so she can land his father (Tom Arnold).
Donald Roos, who came to some indie film fame with 1998's "The Opposite of Sex" continues to mull over how people operate and how sex affects it. Here, Nicky tells Mamie that she likes being the "woman with a secret," someone who appears one way but is really hiding something no one suspects. By the end of the film, it seems just about everyone has something they are hiding in the hopes of being more acceptable to someone else.
The film is quite enjoyable, and the various subplots and players all come together in the end in true screwball fashion. If there's one complaint about the film, it's the odd technique of having the screen suddenly cut in half with a storytelling titlecard. It gets overused quickly, although it does spare us some convoluted dialogue to explain histories and relationships. Most unessential is the use of this technique to tell us what's going to happen to these characters after the film is over.
[Seen at the Montgomery Cinemas.]
Posted: Wed - November 2, 2005 at 01:09 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM