Multiple character comedy featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Steve Coogan, from the director of <i>The Opposite Of Sex</i>.
DON ROOS made a spirited debut with 1998’s restless The Opposite Of Sex, but seven years and one Ben Affleck-starring romance later he’s landed himself in the ugly, middle-of-the-road miasma of the played-out
multi-character drama.
Superficially, Happy Endings tries to recapture some of the sexual edge of Roos’ debut. There’s a treacherous vixen (Gyllenhaal) insinuating herself into the lives of a closeted gay man and his lonely father; an abortion counsellor (Kudrow) facing a paternity revelation from an extortionist filmmaker; and a gay couple (Coogan and David Sutcliffe) locked in a custody dispute with their lesbian pals (Laura Dern and 24’s Sarah Clarke). Problem is, the three-stories-in-one is such a hack filmmaker device these days that the drama never feels more than a well-shot TV soap. Worse is Roos’ tragic insistence on text inserts to explain every motivation, making the whole thing look like a fatal cross between Queer As Folk and VH1’s Pop Up Video.
multi-character drama.
Superficially, Happy Endings tries to recapture some of the sexual edge of Roos’ debut. There’s a treacherous vixen (Gyllenhaal) insinuating herself into the lives of a closeted gay man and his lonely father; an abortion counsellor (Kudrow) facing a paternity revelation from an extortionist filmmaker; and a gay couple (Coogan and David Sutcliffe) locked in a custody dispute with their lesbian pals (Laura Dern and 24’s Sarah Clarke). Problem is, the three-stories-in-one is such a hack filmmaker device these days that the drama never feels more than a well-shot TV soap. Worse is Roos’ tragic insistence on text inserts to explain every motivation, making the whole thing look like a fatal cross between Queer As Folk and VH1’s Pop Up Video.
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