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Actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, Lara Flynn Boyle
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about Happiness |
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This is a very funny and unsettling movie. Ostensibly about three middle class sisters -- a happily married housewife (Cynthia Stevenson), a glamourous single poet (Lara Flynn Boyle), and a comparatively plain-jane loser (Jane Adams) -- and their problems with their family and sex lives, "Happiness" tends to draw one's attention to the males in the plot. One is the housewife's husband, a successful psychiatrist and incipient pedophile attracted to his 11-year-old son's playmates (Dylan Baker), and the other, one of the psychiatrist's clients -- an overweight loser who lives down the hall from the poet sister and lusts after her, makes obscene phone calls to her, and masturbates incessantly (the astounding Philip Seymour Hoffman). The son and a dog also figure in. As this much suggests, the ironically titled film is highly disturbing as well as amusing. All the acting is excellent, especially Baker, Hoffman, and Adams (you can also glimpse Louise Lasser, Ben Gazzara, and Camryn Manheim in the supporting cast), and it's quite an achievement to make a pedophile the most sympathetic character in one's story, but I can't award the movie a 10 simply because it is so depressing and bitingly heartless.
--David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of Happiness |
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Comedy, primarily
Yes
Time/era of movie:
- 1980's-1999
Inner struggle or disability
Yes
Struggle with
- (General) search for meaning/identity
Taboo Sex Story?
Yes
Kind of sex:
- molestation
Brain/Body not working?
- mental illness
Battle with shrink/bum?
- battle with a psychiatrist
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- doctor
Age:
- 40's-50's
Eccentric:
Yes
- obsessed
- mentally ill
- emotionally unstable
Events of movie makes character more...
- sad
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- soggy whimpering jelly muffin
Sense of humor?
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Hair color
- red
Hair style
- (man) short/standard straight
Body type
- (man) fat
Unclothed?
- buttocks and chest
How much in movie?
- 60%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
City?
Yes
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- no torture/death
Movie makes you feel...
- all mixed up
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
- touching of personal anatomy
- seeing nude female butt
- seeing nude male butt
- sex under blankets
Any profanity?
- Some foul language
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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