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"It's a comedy, sort of," a title card announces at the start of
Happy Endings --just after Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) has been hit by a car. So it is, but talk about an unhappy beginning! Never fear, writer/director Don Roos will fulfill the promise of that title in several unexpected ways. The story then flashes back to 1983 for Mamie's life-altering encounter with her stepbrother. Mamie and Charley (Steve Coogan) will struggle with its consequences for the rest of the film. Does her teen pregnancy explain the fact that she became an abortion counsellor or that he came out of the closet? Roos doesn't say, but nor does he judge. He loves his characters--foibles and all--in his ambitious, Altman-esque follow-up to the acerbic yet heartfelt >
The Opposite of Sex. As before, Kudrow is the center around which the other plotlines revolve (and her uptight, yet likable Mamie couldn't resemble TVs Phoebe less). In the end, though, Maggie Gyllenhaal's seductive Jude and Tom Arnold's sensitive Frank are Roos' most inspired creations. Their relationship is one of contemporary cinema's oddest and most touching. The happy ending for one will be real, the other imaginary, but everyone will earn the one they get.
--Kathleen C. Fennessy
Synopsis
This comedic drama from writer-director Don Roos ('The Opposite Of Sex') comes packed with many unusual themes including abortion, homosexual parenting, teenage pregnancy, marrying for green cards, and the unscrupulous practice of bringing a client to orgasm at the conclusion of a massage (the happy ending referenced in the title). Lisa Kudrow plays the recipient of one such massage, and she later makes a video about her masseur/lover who says he has information about a son she gave up for adoption years earlier. Meanwhile, her gay brother (Steve Coogan) suspects that his boyfriend may have given sperm to a lesbian couple (Laura Dern and Sarah Clarke) to help them have a daughter. Another thread of this intricately woven plot concerns a sexual libertine (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who seduces both a rich widower (Tom Arnold) and his closeted gay son (Jason Ritter). Amazingly, it is Arnold who manages to stand out among the ensemble cast with an endearingly vulnerable performance that lingers in the mind long after the film is over. With onscreen pop-ups relaying information about both the past and the future of the characters, the acting and the script are uniformly first-rate. Tracks by Calexico and Kid Loco comprise a lot of the great soundtrack, and Gyllenhaal's real singing voice is heard during her character's several torchy numbers.