Happy Endings (Don Roos, 2005, USA) May 7, 2007
Posted by Daniel Stephens in : Horror, Comedy, 2000s, Drama, Film reviews , trackbackDir. Don Roos; screenplay by Don Roos; starring Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, David Sutcliffe, Laura Dern
Counting how many movies writer/director Don Roos was trying to make with Happy Endings is about as difficult as deciphering Steve Coogan’s unusual pseudo-American accent. Not that I’m saying Coogan is bad in the film. I clocked he was gay from a screen shot of the film based on his feminine poise, which indicates he’s believable in his role as he does indeed play a gay character. Yet, Coogan, like so much else in this film, is wasted. The British comic’s talent is much more akin to the sort of offbeat niches seen in A Cock and Bull Story, 24 Hour Party People and his television roles. He actually suited an American-style character in The Alibi much more because it served his awkward humour, giving him a character on the wrong side of weird. In Happy Endings, anything Coogan brings to the film is lost with everything else Roos is trying to achieve as he can’t find the sum for all his parts. The film is full of quirky story arcs and possibly interesting characters, but the switching from story to story, character to character, makes it very difficult for an audience to keep up. Tarantino was able to make it work in Pulp Fiction with brilliant dialogue and sensationalised stories. Roos, in trying to keep attention on his characters, tries to work the interlocking element of their lives into a coherent narrative but he misses Tarantino’s trick. Instead of the interlocking nature of the plot being a sort of negligible oddity, Happy Endings’ is contrived and predictable.
Rating: 2 out of 5
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