After his 1995 breakthrough, Welcome to the Dollhouse, director Todd Solondz was courted by a number of studios to make a big-budget film with top stars. Instead, he chose to make this aggressively dark comedy-drama of perversions and twisted lives. Andy Kornbluth (Jon Lovitz) explodes with anger after rejection in a restaurant from Joy Jordan (Jane Adams), one of a trio of middle-class New Jersey sisters. Joy's sister Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a housewife with three kids, is married to
psychiatrist Bill (Dylan Baker), who counsels the lonely, overweight Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Allen is obsessed with Joy's other sister, the successful poet Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), all the while ignoring the attentions of his seemingly sweet yet overweight neighbor Kristina (Camryn Manheim). Bill has fantasies of turning an assault rifle on families in a park, masturbates to teen magazine photos, and develops an unhealthy interest in a classmate of his 11-year-old son, Billy (Rufus Read). After a telephone sales job, Joy moves on to substitute teach at an adult education class, where she falls prey to the advances of an insensitive cabdriver, Vlad (Jared Harris). Allen's series of obscene phone calls to Helen come to an end when she challenges him to come next door and carry out his sexual threats. Meanwhile, the sisters' parents, Lenny and Mona Jordan (Ben Gazzara and Louise Lasser), find their marriage collapsing after 40 years. Lenny has sparked the interest of divorcée Diane Freed (Elizabeth Ashley), but he actually would prefer to be alone. The path to happiness, it seems, is littered with dreams, despair, and abnormalities. Winner of the International Critics' prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, Happiness met with much controversy both in pre-production and upon its release, as chronicled in producer Christine Vachon's book Shooting to Kill. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
By far Solondz's best film, an original exploration of American suburban angst, with three Chekhovian sisters at the center and a gallery of "deviant" characters that are presented with humor in non-judgmental way.
Regardless, if you can stomach the incredibly disturbing and challenging core of the film...then you're in for at least half of an interesting ride. It's worth a rental if you meet these qualifications.
A collection of loosely connected suburbanites come come to terms with their own flaws and failings in their quest for elusive "happiness". Todd Solondz's tragi-comedy no doubt met with shock and outrage from the moral majority and it is hard not to suspect that he was deliberately baiting the religious right with
material that is so close to the knuckle. These characters suffer rejection, isolation, insecurity and sexual frustration at the hands of their peers and even when handed their fantasies, the result is nothing less than crushing disappointment. His attitude appears to be that social awkwardness begins at the age of 11 and continues into old age and we all seem utterly powerless to do anything about it; we're born, we're miserable and we die. A lot of us will find it hard to disagree but not everyone will be able to see the funny side of rape and child molestation! The closest comparisons I can think of are the likes of Magnolia and American Beauty, but Solondz takes these ideas to their most extreme and so therefore Happiness will only be to the taste of a small minority, but those who can stomach it will find some reward in this bleakest of the bleak black comedy that's unlike anything you've ever seen before.
March 1, 2007
xGary Xx
Super Reviewer
Brutal, beautiful, and hard to watch...this film tests a viewers mind and has a cerebral aftereffect
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