Undescribable Perfection

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good start, but then it gets ruined

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

Happiness starts very well, in that it sets up its characters solidly, and ends really, really, really bad because it makes no point whatsoever. What's even worse is that it tries to trick you into thinking that it's a movie "to be taken seriously" because everybody's a sex addict and everybody's miserable and everybody throws up. In case you didn't get it: the title "Happiness" is used for its opposite meaning. What saves this pretentious movie from is essentially its great cast, especially that little boy whose father is a pedophile. He essentially played an un- pitchable child role. What an impressive and mature performance!The first forty minutes or so are very interesting in terms of character evolution, but there's no use for you to look at your watch, because these are only forty minutes out of one hundred and forty minutes worth of very, very, very pointless controversy wrapped in very, very, very unaesthetic cinematography. Long story short, this is a movie where very promising satire and sarcasm is dumped for explicit material. As a matter of fact, everything that the characters do seems to be for shock value. The grandfather who pours tons of salt on his plate despite his doctor's recommendations (no need to shoot further scenes to elaborate of course). The neighbour who phone-harrasses women and ends up drunk and pukes everywhere. The little boy who, after six laborious months, finally shoots his cum, has his dog eat it and joyfully tells his entire family that he had an orgasm. Please.Yes, a scene like the one where a father suggests demonstrating masturbation to his son will surprise you, shock you, make you smile, make you laugh, offend you, make you applaud the writer for his unapologetic manners, but once you're past the effect, Happiness will leave no room for you to reflect in any way, for the simple reason that there's nothing to reflect about since everything's done for the sake of spontaneous disgust and/or offence. If you want good sarcasm, taboo topics and impeccable cinematography, check out "Sitcom" by François Ozon, where a mother decides to sleep with her gay son to "cure" him from his homosexuality. It has an irresistibly witty and sarcastic dialogue, an asset that "Happiness" crucially lacks. When you want to be honest with people with topics as delicate as pedophilia, you need something to counter-balance it. Pasolini shot the most shocking sexual scenes in history but he had the most poetic cinematography and sound track to back it up with! It is one thing to push people's buttons to make them reflect on something and a totally different thing to go for shock value. Happiness is not the former.

In "Happiness", director Todd Solondz manages to craft a true masterpiece that will definitely make some people a bit too uncomfortable to really like or enjoy. "Happiness" is certainly not for the easily offended or disturbed, since it deals with some very mature and unsettling subject matter such as perversion, rape, pedophilia, murder, depression, etc. "Happiness" also surprises us by making the whole thing a comedy. A really, really dark comedy-but still a comedy.The dialogue is absolutely magnificent. As I said, this is a truly dark comedy, so there's plenty of really, really messed up and disgusting lines of dialogue throughout this film that made me howl with laughter, and some are even hidden in really depressing sequences. Solondz's film manages to be an emotional roller coaster, filled with sequences that are simultaneously funny and cold, and it all somehow manages to work.Performances are also pretty great. Each of the actors really becomes their character and reflect the deep sadness in this film. As one can easily tell, most of the characters in this film are severely lacking in any happiness whatsoever (making the title really ironic), and this film is their journey to find true happiness-and a lot of them, sadly, don't.The film is really spectacular in every sense of the word. From the cynical, twisted sense of humor, to the more emotionally touching scenes-"Happiness" is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, no matter how sick, vile, or disturbing it really is.

Similar to how movie critics make something relevant all of sudden, they will likely to do this to movie primarily because its dark and honest and really beat many other movie to that weird "indie-dark-mumblecore bullshit" i'm mainly putting this hear so I have proof later to call reddit, and other stupid movie lovers on their bullshit of following whatever Hollywood tells them is good.It's a good film that will get it's mainstream praise eventually, its just thats is already good it doesn't need mainstream praise, if some movie critic in the future brings this movie out to the public eye again, it will only be because they are trying to seem more "informative" and trying to making a name for themselves.

When I watched this film I knew I was going to love it from the beginning. It simply describes life! Most of us would love that time does not pass but it does. For some it passes quickly, for others slowly, but it passes. Little children grow up and eventually become adults. They have to perform sexual act to continue the species. Some parents take that fact with normal attitude, others do not. Also, time passes for some male adults who develop interest for young(er) people. Hm, hm, may be a little too young. This film describes this film so well.Acting is excellent. Plot is excellent as well. Everything is excellent about this film. Please make sure you watch it!