Happiness (1998)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Happiness is a brilliant and deviant piece of incredible film making by director Todd Solondz. This dark comedy masterpiece was highly recommended by friends that have seen it and it holds up really well. This centers on 3 sisters and their absolutely dysfunctional family. This takes a unflinching look at just how disturbing life in suburban America can be. Happiness predates American Beauty by a year and is such a profoundly disturbing, original and thought provoking experience in cinema that is absolutely uncompromising and strong in its presentation of the darkest corners of suburbia. The movie is very clever and wickedly funny. The dialouge is brilliant and performances are magnificent from the ensemble cast, many of which would go on to be big stars, like Philip Seymour Hoffman. Happiness, is not a mainstream movie by any means and won't appeal to everybody. However, Happiness is very well made and I think the film is outstanding.

And I argue it is one of the top five films of the 1990s. Others have said what needs to be said.

I liked Happiness in some weird way. This movie is really interesting to watch despite all those disturbing scenes it has. You just cant stop watching until it's done, you wanna see what's gonna happen next. For that alone I give it 9, but because of some nasty things in the movie, gotta lower the grade by 1.8+

Happiness is nothing but cheap indie shock porn. A hollow, impotent Pink Flamingos wannabe that chooses easy subjects of provocation to just appease expendable income chic cine-masochists and leaves the more human among us asking why people's time and money was wasted on this spiteful, one note effort. Most insultingly, it has the nerve to ask us to care for its squirm suburban paranoia caricatures whilst simultaneously breaking out the Farley Brothers level of gross out humour every opportunity it can. Insincerity is the most evident sign of amateurism in a storyteller and this adolescent effort is the most blatant example I've ever come across in film. Worse than non-action, insincerity or a lack of moral stance is the bane of independent filmmaking, more often than not it's not an effort towards greater truth but rather one towards covering up an immature or trivial concept or a weak surface value vision which is what we have here. Todd Solondz aims just to cause his audience pain and even if he had higher aspirations, they definitely are not evident on screen, and if laughing at other people's misery is your idea of the epitome of cinema, well you are beyond help and your fabricated soul has no place being anywhere near a film screen. Your kind will have your time soon and it will be a spacious, lengthy, dark time. Admittedly, I should check out more from the wasteful decade of American independent cinema that spawned this faux-intellectual piece of inhumanity before I say anything too concrete, god forbid, but for now I'll just say bluntly that this film, and its defendants, can go to hell despite them not being flammable, what with all the fibre glass and all