Happy Accidents (2000)

Overrated and overhyped

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

*Contains spoilers* This is a most trying movie. The idea seemed good going on the DVD cover, but the reality is tedious and at time irritating.It could have been OK if only the scriptwriter hadn't had verbal diarrhoea and if the female lead hadn't acted the part far too often in a fit of hysteria. We have to endure groups having arty conversations that have very little to do with the plot - at times nothing at all that I could see, and worse, are excruciatingly boring.The heroine is irritatingly dim. She's had a history of loser lovers and when you watch her you aren't going to be very surprised about that. When her futuristic lover turns up, she's unable to listen to him trying to explain his situation because she's just too thick to understand anything much of what he's talking about. She doesn't have to believe him, but she could at least have some grasp of science and time so that the guy could feel he's talking to a woman with a brain. In other words, these two characters are totally unsuited - unless the futuristic visitor really wants just a bimbo? It's somehow not surprising that she has to keep visiting a shrink though she doesn't seem to improve from the visits.The most worrying thing is why this futuristic guy bothered to come back to find Ruby, but I guess it must be that man thing we women hear about that men fall for a girl's looks, not her intellect. This girl doesn't have much intellect. I have to say this may be due to the frenetic way the part is played. Perhaps the actress could have interpreted the script with something more measured than that style which Americans call zany. Perhaps it was all meant to be hilariously funny but I love funny stories and I didn't find much in this movie that's really funny.The hero tries, he really does. He acts the part pretty well. You can feel for him. It would have been good to hear more about his future time but we're told so little it's infuriating.There are a few interesting touches in what's mostly pretty long-drawn-out and disappointing. I particularly liked it whenever we were introduced to other time travellers, particularly the shrink - yes, that was a surprise to me, very clever. But those intro's were so rare and so brief. Once I knew there were others around, I was waiting for them and a few more would have helped liven up the movie.The solution to saving the hero from his problem re how to "stay" in "now" is one of those tedious ideas that "love will do the trick. It was so, so cheesy. For all we know, it may really be the solution to everything, but I hope not the way it's put over in this movie. This is a movie based on a quite clever sf idea but the s has nearly all gone missing and it's very short on any interesting f.Vaguely watchable if you are desperate for something to see and take a liking to the casting.The issue of what happens if you change history by going back in time is always intriguing. A pity it wasn't treated more seriously in this tale, but I think this movie isn't aimed at sf fans.

What part of this movie was good??? Therapist that doesn't know psychology, a best friend who is not.What kind of New Yorker would be OK with someone who finding out where they lived, then followed them to work? Then there is a PhD in physics who gets mad at being called a time traveler? This movie could be good if you love Star Trek The Next Generation. You would love people making up what sound like technical creations and then rattling them off with a bunch of non existent words.If this is a movie you need to pay attention to in order to understand it, then we live in a short attention span country.Side note: Some of his theories of time travel are true. Bending time, in order to time travel, does exist.

I watched this flick eight years after the fact. Its one of those movies that you are skeptical about for quite some time but that eventually just win you over to their side. The bottom line is that Marisa and Vincent's argument scenes are just so hilarious that it hardly matters what the rest of the film is about or does. Anyone who is married or in thick relationships gets into those arguments that are so stupid that logic, wisdom and intelligence become besides the point. The point is these two people and their wants, fears, needs and their underlying desire to love the person they are arguing with lead to a conclusion that may not make sense but becomes Cupid's compromise. I was not not familiar with Vincent O. but he was just great. And no one, no one, does New York better than Marisa.

About 4 months ago I started using my local public library as a poor man's Netflix. I would think up a film that my wife (and maybe I) would like to see and look it up in their catalog and, if they had it, reserve it for delivery to my local branch. There wasn't much they didn't have. At first I got ideas for films from titles I could remember. Then I consulted IMDb and did searches by actor of director, etc. to get titles.About a month ago, after I ran out of my remembrances and IMDb's cross-references, I searched the public library's catalog by year and media type (DVDs). Browsing through the results, in one recent year, I came across a title that seemed familiar and I right clicked it to find out more. The lead male was Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor I had seen in bit parts in film and TV, but who also was featured in a episode of one of my favorite TV series of all time 'Homicide: Life on the Streets'. Yeah, I know. Stupid title. But I swear that show was one of the finest I'd ever seen on TV (bear in mind, I've never had cable). The best cinematography, best editing, best screenplays with the best dialog delivered in the best performances on TV I had ever seen. The episode I saw D'Onofrio in was an episode that was also featured in a two hour PBS documentary 'Anatomy of a 'Homicide: Life on the Street', which was also excellent. D'Onofrio did a marvelous job in that episode. So good, I thought I'd like to see him in another lead role. When I came across it in the library catalog search, I decided to order the film even though the library catalog blurb read "A single girl with an obsession for fixing the emotional problems of oddball men finally meets a guy who seems normal. The only snag is that he says he came from the future to save her life". Sounded kinda a smaltzy romantic comedy we recently viewed - Kate & Leopold. It even had Marisa Tomei in it.Unfortunately, it arrived with another movie I wanted to see more and so I just saw the first two minutes before I returned it to the library. But that first two minutes was so hypnotic and enticing that I added the D'Onofrio film to the another batch of library requests.Tonight I viewed it. I reran the first two minutes twice and it really wasn't as good as I kinda thought it was a month ago in it's first aborted viewing - it was better. About ten minutes in, I was beginning to think this might turn out to be my favorite film of the last year. About twenty minutes in, I was beginning to think this might turn out to be my favorite film in the last 5 years. About one hour in, I was beginning to think this might turn out to be my favorite film in the last 10 years. By the end of the film, I was beginning to think this might turn out to be my favorite film.This film has some of the best cinematography, best editing, best soundtrack, best sound editing (since The Conversation), best screen writing with the best dialog delivered in the best performances I had ever seen.